In the mid-1900s, anthropologists Elman R. Service (1962) and Morton H. Fried (1967) created two different, yet complementary discussions of how societies organized themselves, represented by varying degrees of community organization and patterns of redistribution. Both scholars created created a description of different aspects of human communities using four different categories (see below); while there are four in each system, they are not 100% comparable as they emphasize different aspects of human culture.  One of the main interests of archaeology is to answer the question of how people organize themselves on a social level. We can recognize the physical differences that are occurring in the archaeological sites as people become sedentary and have less transhumance or mobility across the landscape. Equally important to changes in food production and technology are coincident changes in community forms and organization. Inferences concerning prehistoric organization MUST be based on a thorough examination of the archaeological record and assumptions concerning these organizational changes must be revealed in the material remains. Usually these material patterns are related to community organization through the comparison of the ethnographic record (written record of living peoples).  

Fried’s Societal Categories	Service’s Economic Categories
Egalitarian Societies	Band Organization
Ranked Societies	Tribe Organization
Segmented Societies	Chiefdom Organization
State Societies	State Organization

In an egalitarian society, the simplest criteria of age, sex, and ability are used to assign prestige. The primary means of assigning prestige or status in these societies is universal and open to all individuals on an equal basis. Anyone who is of a certain sex and lives long enough to be a certain age, will automatically achieve certain statuses. There are as many positions of prestige as there are people to fill them in these societies. Thus, there are NO predetermined number of openings for a particular status position. For example, if there are four young male hunters, then there are four positions….if there were only three, then there would be three positions. These types of societies are almost exclusively hunter-gatherers and the production of goods and procurement of food is mostly a household matter; family groups are not specialized; exchange is informal and takes place between individuals.

Ranked is a relative measure as no true egalitarian societies exist. The primary difference between egalitarian and ranked societies is the way in which differential prestige is handled. A ranked society places limitations on access to valued statuses and these limitations are only indirectly related to sex, age, or personal attributes. Because of these limitations, ranked societies have fewer positions of valued status than the number of people capable of filling them. Various techniques are employed for limiting status to certain persons – the simplest is dependent on birth order as in, the first born is given the highest status.

The hierarchy of status can be represented by a triangle and this has definite economic advantages. Fried suggested that ranking is caused by economic and other external factors (that is, ranking is not inherent in human behavior).

A stratified society has institutionalized differential relationships among its members.  Usually this is in terms related to the means of subsistence, or how people get access to their food. Some members have direct access to critical resources, while access to these same resources is denied or restricted for other members. The emergence of stratification requires a more formal means of communication and regulation as this society requires formal statements of legal principles to adjudicate and enforce the rules.

Service’s simplest form of organization are termed bands, which are small, territorial hunter-gathered groups that range in size from 30 to 100 members.  These bands tend to be related kin groups with spouses usually selected from outside the band (exolocal).  The primary forms of status differentiation are based on age and gender.  Political and economic specialization are normally absent, except as they relate to age, sex, and family.  Bands would be comprable and incorporate Fried’s egalitarian system of economic differentiation.

Service’s second level of organization is the tribe.  The primary difference between tribes and bands is the development of social techniques to integrate local groups into a larger society.  These mechanisms take the form of various sodalities (relationships) that cross-cut local groups and can include same-age groups, secret societies, as well as warrior and religious societies.  Most tribes remain egalitarian in terms of Fried’s terminology. Tribes usually have agricultural economies, although hunter-gatherers who are sedentary for much of the year may develop the necessary integrative institutions to be considered tribes.  This is illustrated in terms of the secret societies within the Pacific Northwest Coast Native Americans (sedentary hunter-gatherers in elaborate semi-permanent villages).

Chiefdoms

Chiefdoms do not usually have social classes in the modern sense, but some members attain social positions that carry with them enhanced power and privilege.  Craft and food production specialization usually is present. Because these specializations are present, there is usually a mechanism of redistribution of good in which the chief plays an important role. However, the chief usually lacks true differential access to and the control of strategic resources that would constitute social stratification in Fried’s terminology

Many scholars have criticized both models in terms of the general implications (social evolution, etc.) as well as the specific details. However, while they are considered “ideal types”, most scholars use them as a form of communication and enable an understanding of organizational changes during the rise of complex societies and to help explain how modern societies developed. Most frequently, these schemes are used to examine cultural evolution and change within the archaeological record.  However, it should not be thought that the levels of organization seen in the archaeological record MUST exhibit all the details found in the ethnographically-recorded societies that were used for these models.  These models are useful frameworks for the study of organizational changes and social evolution in ancient societies.

Marcell Mauss (1925) saw gift exchange has a fundamental social relationship that bound groups/people together, such that iIdividual X would establish or reinforce a relationship with Individual Y by means of a gift. This gift usually transcended any monetary value by means of the gesture and the familial or individual social bond.  This also imposed obligations:  to accept a gift implies obligation of repayment by another, equally magnificent presentation.  This is something we may have experience during Christmas gift lr card exchanges where you may remember a previous elaborate gift and the need to reciprocate an equal or greater value or reciprocate with another form of gift.  One of the most famous demonstrations of gift-based societies was the kula ring as originally studied by Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922).

How do we see these societies archaeologically?

City States

City states appeared to be a common form of rule related to the importance of large urban centers and their hinterlands.  The classical definition of a city state is a self-governing entity that encompasses the boundaries of the city, but may also include villages, small hamlets, and agricultural lands surrounding it.  City states were considered the most numerous in the ancient and relatively recent past, but only a few, such as Vatican City, Monaco, and Singapore, are recognized in the modern era as well as the Renaissance-era Italian city-states such as Florence, Milan, and Venice.

The most common ones that students may recognize are those of ancient Greece, including the city states of Athens and Sparta (home of The 300 and the original citizens of the Battle of Thermopylae).  Deviations may be represented by large cities within a loose empire, such as Rome as a central authority and Carthage as a semi-independent city state that provided tribute to the main authority.

City states were represented by a group of individuals called citizens (occupants of the city) that had cultural and political allegiance to a large urban center.  It appears that the city state was the most common form of governance until the recent appearance of modern empires and nation states. This was the primary form of governance that we see in prehistoric settlements with the emergence of the city in the ancient regions of the Indus Valley Civilization (northwestern South Asia), the early Mesopotamian cities (modern Iraq), and the Mayan cities (nation states of the modern Yucatan Peninsula in Mesoamerica).  The latter two civilizations have writing systems that have been deciphered and the political histories of warfare and rebellion between the city states is fairly-well known.

While the Indus Valley Civilization has a writing system, it remains undeciphered.  Thus, we can look at various indicators of cultural complexity and rule based on settlement pattern analysis and artifact style and distribution.  It appears there are about five major urban centers (Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Chanhu-daro, Ganeriwala, Dholavira, and Rakhigera) in the Indus Valley Civilization that encompassed over 1 million square kilometers in extent. Each large urban center seemed to have distinct versions of Indus Valley ceramic motifs and other artifacts and there seems to be a robust trade with specific resources or routes controlled by the urban centers.

 

Bordieu’s Forms of Capital

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) developed his theory of cultural capital, with Jean-Claude Passeron, as part of an attempt to explain differences in educational achievement according to social origin.  In part, this was strongly influenced by the late 1960s to 1980s influences of Marxism in the social sciences.  HIs theory works on the interdigitation of three forms of capital – cultural, social, and economic.  The cultural and social forms of capital are based on and not determined by the amount of economic capital possessed by social groups and individuals or agents. These three forms of capital combine, and are embodied, to produce an individuals habitus, or set of predispositions or norms, while the field refers to the arena (or social setting, such as ritual [church], in which a specific habitus is deployed.

Pierre Bourdieu Biography

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state; in the objectified state, i; and in the institutionalized state. Cultural capital that is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and maybe institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications (and who has access to education). Bourdieu and Passeron developed the concept of cultural capital in order to examine the impact of culture on the social stratification system and the relationship between action and social structure. In its embodied state, cultural capital is a form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and the body (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 243). In other words, it can be understood as the legitimate cultural preferences and behaviors that are internalized mostly during the process of socialization. In turn, the institutionalized cultural capital can be associated with products or signals such as the educational degrees and diplomas that certify the value of the embodied cultural capital.  Iin its objectified state, cultural capital represents the consumption and acquisition of several cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, etc.).

Social Capital

Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources that are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group that provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital.  This is a ‘credential’ that entitles the members or agents to credit, in the various senses of the word. These relationships may exist only in the practical state, in material and/or symbolic exchanges which help to maintain them. Bourdieu’s concept of social capital focuses on conflicts and power relations that may be exposed by a closer look at social relations. Social capital can be perceived as a collection of resources that equals a network of relationships and mutual recognition, i.e., membership in a group. Also, for Bourdieu, social capital can be accumulated and deployed both collectively, for example by a family, and individually. It is mainly operationalized for tangible or symbolic gains. Thus, by being a member of an influential group of agents (members of a Greek society or university or college)or having a strong network of connections, one can monetize this situation for his/her own benefit. Thus, as a theoretical artifact, social capital engulfs the notion of social relations which increases the ability of an actor to advance her/his interests

Economic Capital

Bourdieu focuses on Marxian accounts of economic capital, such that it is purely individual material assets that can be directly and easily convertible into money or maybe institutionalized in the forms of property rights. Economic capital includes every form of material resources such as financial resources and land or property ownership. It consists of capital in Marxian terms, but it also engulfs other economic possessions that increase an agent’s capacities in society. However, Bourdieu does not define explicitly the notion of economic capital since he borrows this idea from the field of economics. He seems to merely offer a materialist interpretation of the notion; yet, this fact does not lead to a reductionist approach. He understands economic capital as a resource of paramount importance which, on one hand, distinct the agents who play the social game and, on the other hand, is unfairly distributed by being characterized by the law of transmission. Thus, economic capital manifests itself as the root of all other forms of capital which can be understood as disguised forms of economic capital.

Concepts of Power

Political Power

Economic Power

Social and Ideological Power

Factionalism and Ideology