Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups in California and the Great Basin: The Rise of Orderly Anarchy

Summary

Socio-political development in aboriginal California follows a trajectory quite different from that in much of western North America, culminating in very small socio-political units, in some places independent family groups approximating those characteristic of the Great Basin. The key development leading to this family-level organization was in both places the privatization of stored plant food, which incentivized the intensive use of plant foods (pinyon and acorn) that were abundant but costly process. Privatization was the result of a technological breakthrough, the appearance of bow and arrow technology, which permitted the formation of smaller, family-centered social units more inclined to invest in costly resource procurement because the proceeds of that went directly to offspring and close relatives, culminating in a system termed "orderly anarchy."

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Presidential Forum: Orderly Anarchy in Prehistoric California

Keywords

Spatial Coverage