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Chapter 13. Reconstructing Social and Political Systems of the Past. Outline. Archaeology and Gender Archaeology and Kinship Archaeology and Social Status Trade and Political Organization. Key Components of Human Society.
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Chapter 13 Reconstructing Social and Political Systems of the Past
Outline • Archaeology and Gender • Archaeology and Kinship • Archaeology and Social Status • Trade and Political Organization
Key Components of Human Society • Gender - Assigning specific artifacts to men and women is difficult. • Kinship is a major structuring principle of human social organization, but it leaves ambiguous traces. • Social status - Many ancient societies may have been organized politically in ways that have no straightforward ethnographic analogies today.
Social Organization • Rules and structures that govern relations within a group of interacting people. • Societies are divided into social units (groups) within which are recognized social positions (statuses), with appropriate behavior patterns prescribed for these positions (roles).
Political Organization • Formal and informal institutions that regulate a population’s collective acts. • Chiefdom • A regional polity in which two or more local groups are organized under a single chief. • Chiefdoms consist of several more or less permanently aligned communities or settlements.
Archaeology and Gender • Anthropologists distinguish between sex and gender, and between gender roles and gender ideology. • Sex refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females. • Gender refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.
Gender • Humans have two sexes, male and female—but there can be more than two genders. • Some societies recognize men who live as women or women who live as men as a third gender. • In some Plains Indian tribes, berdaches were men who chose to live as women, performing women’s roles.
Gender Role and Ideology • Gender role refers to the different participation of males and females in the social, economic, political, and religious institutions of a cultural group. • Gender ideology refers to the culturally specific meaning assigned to “male,” “female,” “sex,” and “reproduction.”
Cargo System • Part of the social organization found in many Central American communities in which a wealthy individual is named to carry out and bear the cost of important religious ceremonies throughout the year.
Archaeology and Kinship • Kinship refers to the socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent and marriage. • A kinship system blends biological descent with cultural rules that define some people as close kin and others as distant kin. • Kin groupings condition the nature of relationships between individuals.
Bilateral Descent • The standard kinship in North America, as well as many other industrialized nations. • An individual traces his or her relatives equally on the mother’s and father’s sides. • In bilateral descent, the nuclear family is the important economic unit.
Patrilineal Descent • In patrilineal descent, you acquire your patrilineage from your father. • Patrilineal societies make up about 60% of the world’s known societies. • They are associated with hunting-and gathering, agricultural, and pastoral societies. • They are also associated with warfare with close neighbors.
Matrilineal Descent • In matrilineal descent, you trace relatives through the female line. • A matrilineal lineage includes you, your mother, her siblings and her sisters’ offspring, your mother’s mother, etc. • Matrilineal societies compose only about 10% of the world’s societies. • They are associated with horticulture, long distance hunting, and/or warfare with distant enemies.
Lineages, Clans, and Moieties • Lineages are sometimes clustered into clans, a set of lineages that claim to share a distant, often-mythical, ancestor. • Clans may be clustered into moieties. • Moieties often perform reciprocal ceremonial obligations for each other, such as burying the dead of the other or holding feasts for one another.
Residence Patterns • Patrilocal Residence- A newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin; associated with patrilineal descent. • Matrilocal residence - A newly married couple live in the bride’s village of origin; associated with matrilineal descent. • Bilocal residence - The married couple reside either with the husband’s or the wife’s family.
Status • The rights, duties, privileges, powers, liabilities, and immunities that accrue to a recognized and named social position. • Ascribed status - Rights, duties, and obligations that accrue to a person by inheritence. • Achieved status- Rights, duties, and obligations that accrue by virtue of what a person accomplishes.
Egalitarian Societies • The number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them. • No individual wields complete authority over another. • Members of egalitarian societies generally have equal access to life-sustaining resources.
Egalitarian Societies • Small-scale egalitarian societies are called bands. • The key to leadership is experience and social standing; a social position is not inherited in an egalitarian society. • Gender and age are the primary dimensions of status in egalitarian communities.
Ranked Societies • Limit the positions of valued status so that not everyone of sufficient talent can achieve them. • Relatively permanent social stations are maintained with people having unequal access to life-sustaining resources. • Economies that redistribute goods and services throughout the community, with those doing the redistributing keeping some for themselves.
Death and Social Status • Mortuary remains are one important source of information on extinct political systems. • Social ties existed between the living and the once living, and the ceremonial connections at death reflect these social relations. • Mortuary rituals reflect who people were and the relationships they had with others when they were alive.
Mississippian • A widespread cultural tradition across much of the eastern United States from AD 800–1500. • Mississippian societies engaged in intensive village-based maize horticulture and constructed large, earthen platform mounds that served as substructures for temples, residences, and council buildings.
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex • An assortment of ceremonial objects that occurs in the graves of high-status Mississippian individuals. • Ritual exchange of these artifacts crosscut the boundaries of many distinctive local cultures.
Human Trade Systems: Direct Acquisition • You go to the natural source of a raw material. • Extract the material • Exchange goods or services for it or receive an artifact or raw material as a gift.
Human Trade Systems:Down-the-line Trade • People acquire a raw material from people who have immediate access to it. • These people trade it to others who live farther away from the source. • They may in turn trade it to people living even farther away.
Hopewell • A cultural tradition found in the Ohio River Valley dating from 200 BC–AD 400. • Engaged in hunting and gathering and horticulture of indigenous plants. • Known for their mortuary rituals, which included charnel houses and burial mounds; some central tombs contained exotics. • They constructed geometric earthworks as ceremonial enclosures and effigy mounds.
Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source • Energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence (XRF) Uses obsidian’s trace elements to “fingerprint” an artifact and trace it to its geologic source. • Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) - Determines the trace element composition of the clay used to make a pot to identify the clay’s geological source.
Tracing an Artifact to it’s Source • Petrographic analysis - Identifies the mineral composition of a pot’s temper and clay through microscopic observation of thin sections.
Societies are divided into social units within which are recognized _____ with appropriate ____ prescribed for these positions.
Answer: statuses, roles • Societies are divided into social units within which are recognized statuses, with appropriate roles prescribed for these positions.
2. ___ refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females. _____ refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.
Answer: sex, gender • Sex refers to inherited, biological differences between males and females. Gender refers to culturally constructed ideas about sex differences.
3. If a newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin, they are using the following pattern of residence: • Matrilocal • Bilocal • Unilcoal • Patrilocal
Answer: D • If a newly married couple live in the groom’s village of origin, they are using the patrilocal pattern of residence:
4. In a ranked society, the number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them and no individual wields complete authority over another. • True • False
Answer: B. False • In a egalitarian society, the number of valued statuses is equal to the number of persons with the ability to fill them and no individual wields complete authority over another.
