hierarchy (Other Keyword)
1-5 (5 Records)
Using the experimental testbed of the Village Ecodynamics Project’s agent-based simulation "Village," we examine how population growth and resource depletion in the Central Mesa Verde landscape between AD 600 and AD 1280 set the stage for territorial conflict, and how lineage and clan membership likely affected the structure of coalitions. We take a three-pronged approach, combining models for the evolution of leadership, models for the formation of coalitions and alliances, and models for...
Does the Site-Size Hierarchy Concept Mask the Complexity of Urban-Hinterland Relations? (2017)
The site-size hierarchy concept was born of a marriage between a long-standing interest in the emergence of the state and the mid-twentieth-century development of systematic regional survey projects. The assumption of equivalence between sites and territorial complexity facilitated an intellectual investment in survey data beyond a mere tally of sites towards an analysis of the way in which political administrations functioned at the landscape scale. The resultant easy equivalence of four-tiered...
Hierarchies and Heterarchies in Iron Age Europe (2016)
Traditionally, Iron Age communities have been depicted as hierarchical, triangular societies, with elites at the top of the social pyramid and a strong warrior tradition. However, archaeological evidence reveals very varied patterns of societies during the First Millennium BC in Europe, from those that display marked signs of social hierarchy, to others where social differentiation was much less pronounced. This paper aims to contribute to the task of rethinking Iron Age communities from the...
Levels of Hierarchy in Northern Mexico: The Color of Ritual at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico (2015)
In societies across the ancient world, incipient leadership and centralization were founded on connections to the cosmological through ancestors, origins, and other ritual practices. At Paquimé in northern Chihuahua, Mexico these ritual practices were expressed through the language of color symbolism. Color/directional symbolism is a cosmological principle that acts as a deep structure for societies in the Puebloan U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica. Red, black, yellow, white, and blue/green...
Rejection or Reinvention: Rethinking social hierarchy in the post-collapse Colla polity (AD 1000-1450) of southern Peru. (2015)
The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku, around AD 1000, was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling elite. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku’s ruling dynasty, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca basin peoples abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku’s authority. A 1500-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, and ritual practice turned to the...