The Rise, Spread, and Dominion of Human Institutions

Populations organize into complex systems to resolve the myriad of problems they come across in their daily life. These include resolving basic subsistence concerns, maintaining a stable decision-making apparatus, defending against foreign aggressors, resolving existential issues associated with their place in the cosmos, etc. New Institutional Economics (North 1991, 2009) proposes that these organizational principles result in a number of social institutions that once formed have the structural autonomy to preserve themselves, perpetuate their agendas, and in some cases expand aggressively. Under this approach, social scientists increasingly study present-day institutions to clarify the mechanisms by which they develop and evolve. To this aim, archaeology provides us with an unparalleled appreciation for institutional change because it allows us to reconstruct how and why specific institutions developed in different populations with various social conditions and through very long sequences of time. This symposium will take advantage of the comparative potential intrinsic to the study of prehistoric societies to clarify why specific institutions appeared at particular moments in the developmental history of some populations, what functional purpose they served, how they created ethos that cemented their place within the broader social zeitgeist, and why some expanded aggressively within and across populations.