state formation (Other Keyword)
1-14 (14 Records)
Mesopotamia and the Yellow River of China had long trajectories from early farming through to primary urbanisation, but to what extent do the archaeobotanical records indicate parallel developments in terms of agriculture? In both areas agriculture diversifies during the later Neolithic, with an increasing range of annual field crops as well as evidence for the cultivation of some perennials (tree fruits or vines). However, diversity was much higher in western Asia, from both a highly diverse...
Collective Action in State Building, Past and Present (2017)
I report on a comparative study of degrees of collective action in 30 premodern states and 30 contemporary nation-states. Contrary to the notion of democratic reform in state-building, I found roughly similar proportions of more and less collective (autocratic) states in the two samples. I propose a hypothesis for the failure of democratic reform drawn from collective action theory.
Engaged Investigation: Archaeology within Copán’s past and contemporary neighborhoods (2015)
Generations of Copán archaeologists have revealed the secrets of royal tombs and hieroglyphic inscriptions, as well as explored humble households of the rural periphery. A new project brings together these two initiatives to study the diversity of settlement within one particular neighborhood of the ancient city. Growth and change in the San Lucas neighborhood are articulated with major political events at Copán’s center to assess the degree of state integration, and more importantly, when, how,...
Foundations to the Late Classic Kingdom: Copan in the 6th century CE (2017)
Historical and archaeological data support interpretation of Classic Maya polities as centralized states—strongly integrated organizations with stratified and hierarchical political structures led by rulers wielding coercive power. Yet archaeology is often hard pressed to identify changes instigated by individuals or events, or define watershed moments when particular sites or regions coalesced as states. By the early sixth century CE, the kingdom of Copan had established itself as a dominant...
Gift of the Nile? Climate Change and the Origins and Interconnections of Egyptian Civilization within Northeast Africa (2015)
The Greek historian Herodotus, cribbing from Hecataeus of Miletus, famously wrote, "Any sensible person sees at once… that the Egypt to which the Greeks sail is land acquired by the Egyptians and a gift of the river…." Scholars today see the same basic landscape as Herodotus did before them in Egypt and northern Sudan, a narrow strip of green fed by the Nile and surrounded by an absolute desert. This distinctive ecology thus continues to play a central role in models for the origins of the...
The Incorporation of the Chicama Valley into the Southern Moche Polity (AD 200 – 900): A Preliminary Biodistance Assessment (2016)
Nascent state formation is often purported involved the incorporation of nonlocal peoples, this question still remains unresolved for the southern Moche (AD 200 – 900) polity thought to be centered at the Pyramids at Moche site. Some archaeologists (Castillo and Uceda 2010) that the southern Moche state's expansion began following the incorporation of the Cao Viejo polity within the Chicama Valley to the north. Further, a recently published reevaluation of radiocarbon dates for Moche ceramics...
Introduction of a Practice of Horse-Riding in Fifth-Century Japan and its Political Significance (2015)
A practice of horse-riding was introduced to Japan from the late fourth century and after. Since horses were not native to Japan, Korean specialists of raising and producing hoses were invited. Recently, fifth century evidence for raising horses has been excavated at various places in Japan. In the central Osaka Prefecture near where the central polity was located, horses were carefully buried at the foot of small fifth- and sixth-century circular burial mounds, and Korean ceramics were...
Middle Preclassic Occupation and Architecture of the Mirador Basin, Guatemala (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations and technical analyses in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have provided a new perspective of the origins and dynamics of incipient Maya civilization. Data relevant to settlement patterns, sampling strategies, demographic distributions, chronological evaluations, DNA and isotope...
Multiscalar Analysis of an Early Rival to Inca Power (2016)
Systematic regional survey research identified Yunkaray as a town at the center of a hierarchical network of villages near Maras, approximately 20 km to the northwest of the Inca capital. A grid of more than 80 intensive collection units established Yunkaray to be larger than 20 hectares, almost all of which was occupied and abandoned during the Late Intermediate Period (c. AD 1000-1400). The scarcity of Inca imperial pottery in surface collections suggested that abandonment occurred during the...
Seeding the Clouds: A Model of Late Classic Puuc Political Process (2016)
This paper synthesizes the growing body of chronological, settlement, economic, epigraphic, and iconographic data generated from recent research to critically examine traditional models of a short Terminal Classic occupation for the Puuc. The Late Classic period (600-800 AD) was the period in which the political and economic systems of Puuc states crystallized. Settlement patterns suggest that land was a widely available resource during the seventh century, but that the rapid infilling of the...
State Formation Process in Seventh Century A.D. Japan from a Religious Perspective (2015)
Religion played an essential role in the state formation process in seventh century Japan. After Buddhism was introduced from Korea in the sixth century, more than 600 Buddhist temples were erected by the middle eighth century. There are some distinctive layouts of temple complexes, and the central authority greatly contributed to temporal change in the layouts. A considerable change took place in the middle seventh century, which marks the beginning of the national policy to adopt Buddhism as a...
Transition from the Yayoi to Kofun Periods in Third Century A.D. Japan (2015)
The beginning of the Kofun Period in the middle third century A.D. in Japan is often explained in terms of the class distinction of chiefs from ordinary members of the society. This explanation is widely accepted because of the appearance of giant keyhole-shaped burial mounds of more than 270 meters and of "elite mansion." Japanese archaeologists discuss the social complexity of the Kofun Period with reference to social stratification with the chief at the top. In this paper, I apply...
Warfare and the Rise of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southeast Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Warfare and the Origins of Political Control " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have long been interested in the development of social complexity and associated institutions of governance and political control. Within Southeast Asia, historical societies such as Angkor provide insights around premodern state societies. This paper deals with evidence from the late prehistoric era, addressing the role of...
Wide-Range Regional Interaction prior to State Formation in Late Prehistoric Eastern Japan (2015)
In Japan, pottery of various regions was transported for long distances in different directions at the same time and was incorporated into local pottery assemblages from the late second to third centuries A.D. This happened prior to the appearance of the highly-standardized keyhole-shaped burial mounds all over Japan and, in western Japan, local adoption of the type of pottery typical of the Kinki region where the central polity emerged. In eastern Japan, the type of pottery under the influence...