State Formation Process

The volume represents an attempt of a complex study of the politogenetic processes in their regional and temporary variety. The authors hope that their survey can and should also promote a better understanding of the general tendencies and mechanisms of cultural and sociopolitical evolution, of the interrelation and interaction of cultural, social, and political formats in the human society. The authors believe that the use of principles and methods of the civilizational approach in politogenetic studies, on the one hand, and the inclusion of the politogenesis into the problem area of civilizations studies, on the other hand, creates the effect of novelty in terms of both anthropology and civilizations studies, enriches their scientific toolkit and expands heuristic limits.

"Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue to remain among those problems which have not found their generally accepted solutions yet. Contributors to The Early State , Its Alternatives and Analogues represent both traditional and non-traditional points of view on the evolution of statehood. However, the data presented in the volume seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diversity of pathways to statehood, as well as non-universality of transformation into states of complex and even supercomplex societies. The diversity of sociopolitical forms, non-unilinearity of social evolution, presence of alternatives / analogues of the early state and complexity of state formation process far exceeding the ones indicated by conventional evolutionist schemes can be regarded as general ideas going through most contributions to the volume.


Contents


Introduction


Part I: Theory

1 Alternatives of Social Evolution ………………………………… 3

Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Leonid E. Grinin, and Andrey V. Korotayev

2 Was the Chiefdom a Congelation of Ideas? …………………… 28

Robert L. Carneiro

3 Beyond States and Empires: Chiefdoms and Informal Politics 46

Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman, and Peter Skalnik

4 Alternative Models of Middle Range Society.

‘Individualistic' Asia vs . ‘Collectivistic' America ? …………… 61

Yuri E. Berezkin

5 Was the State Inevitable? ………………………………………… 72

Henri J. M. Claessen

6 The Early State and Its Analogues: A Comparative Analysis 88

Leonid E. Grinin


Part II: Early States

7 Early Dynastic Egypt : A Socio-Environmental/Anthropological

Hypothesis of ‘Unification' ………………………………………. 139

Dmitri B. Proussakov

8 The Ruler as Possessor of Power in Sumer …………………….. 181

Vladimir V. Emelianov

9 Ritual and Rationality:

Religious Roots of the Bureaucratic State in Ancient China 196

Richard Baum

10 Conquest Warfare, Strategies of Resistance, and the Rise

of the Zapotec Early State ……………………………………… 220

Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond

11 The Pristine Myth of the Pristine State in America ……………. 262

Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson

12 The Transition to Statehood in Central Europe ………………. 278

Ludomir R. Lozny

13 Formation and Development of States in the Congo Basin …… 288

Eleonora S. L'vova


Part III: Sedentary Alternatives and Analogues

14 The Chiefdom: Precursor of the Tribe? (Some Trends of Political

Evolution in North-East Yemeni Highlands) …………………… 300

Andrey V. Korotayev

15 From Local Communities to Megacommunity: Biniland

in the 1 st Millennium B.C.–19 th Century A.D. ………………… 325

Dmitri M. Bondarenko

16 Greece : The Stateless Polis (11 th – 4 th С enturies B.C.) …………. 364

Moshe Berent

17 Rome : Socio-political Evolution in the 8 th – 2 nd Centuries B.C. 388

Dmitri V. Dozhdev

18 Early State and Democra с y ……………………………………… 419

Leonid E. Grinin


Part IV. Nomadic Alternatives and Analogues

19 Cultural Capital, Livestock Raiding, and the Military Advantage

of Traditional Pastoralists ……………………………………… 466

William Irons

20 Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in Historical Retrospective 476

Anatoly M. Khazanov

21 Nomadic Empires in Evolutionary Perspective ………………… 501

Nikolay N. Kradin

22 Mongolian Nomadic Society of the Empire Period …………… 525

Tatyana D. Skrynnikova"

We present a general theoretical analysis of processes and models of the formation and development of polities, starting with the level of simple chiefdoms and their analogues up to the level of the early states and their analogues. This macroevolutionary process is generally denoted here as primary (initial) politogenesis, whereas the early state formation process is regarded as a component of the politogenesis. The analysis of politogenesis is made against the wide background of late archaic and early civilizational processes.

"The authors reanalyze Claessen’s data set on the “Early States.”
Though Claessen’s Early State typology is largely justified, we suggest
some corrections and amendments to his typologization and
his model of Early State evolution. We show that the development of
personal ownership of land correlates rather weakly with the political
development of the Early State, and that political development
might be accompanied by the strengthening of communal ownership.
We also examine the correlation between Early State political
development and ruler sacralization. Though this correlation is insignificant
for the whole sample, its insignificance is accounted for
by two distinct evolutionary patterns. The pattern observed in the
“axial age” zone is characterized by a strong negative correlation between
political development and ruler sacralization, while the pattern
observed throughout the rest of the world is characterized by a
strong positive correlation between the two variables. The authors
discuss possible causes of this difference."