Beyond Processors: Leadership, Risk, and Decision Making among Women in Anarchic Societies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Anarchic societies resist despotic rule and centralized political power. Such systems are far from chaotic and developed and prospered throughout much of western North America. Both human behavioral ecology (HBE) and anarchist theory offer explanatory frameworks for understanding heterarchy as well as the emergence of (and resistance to) complex political systems and leadership. Leadership models largely focus on elucidating the conditions under which top-down (largely male) leadership emerges. Household-level dynamics, leadership, and decision making by women, however, remain largely underexplored areas of research, relegated to a supportive or secondary status. In this paper I that argue women’s leadership and risk-averse strategizing are key to understanding the evolution and stability of anarchic societies, which are typified by highly productive yet small, autonomous foraging groups in much of western North America. While women’s work is so often the “white noise” of explanatory models, in reality, women were key players who actively maintained social and economically independent households and engaged in a number of critical risk-buffering strategies. Small social units and household autonomy was actively maintained through social and economic means, including intensification of back-loaded resources, resource ownership/control and storage, information sharing, and household flexibility and fluidity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33596