Social Organisation (Archaeology)

Evidence from house structures, artifacts and fauna are used to infer political and economic changes at the Benson site, a late sixteenth century Huron village near Balsam Lake, Ontario. It  is suggested that one household acquired trade links to Europeans in the St. Lawrence valley, and as a result became the largest and most prestigious household in the community. Subsequently, a second household expanded to a comparable size, but did so in opposition to the first house, and represented the “traditionalist” faction.  Ultimately, the traditionalist faction prevailed, and the more progressive house was dismantled, and its inhabitants moved elsewhere.

La présente contribution vise à préciser les aspects géographiques et chronologiques liés à l’apparition, au développement et au déclin d’un type de construction en pierre sèche localement appelée « torre ». Ces édifices monumentaux, qui présentent une forme de tour tronconique, sont élevés selon un cahier des charges architectural précis, et trouvent leur strict équivalent en Sardaigne avec les milliers de nuraghi monotorre du Bronze ancien et moyen. La publication du détail du maigre corpus des torre de Corse, ainsi que la révision des données chronologiques fournies par les fouilles et les prospections opérées ces cinquante dernières années, seront également l’occasion de souligner l’importance prise par ces monuments dans l’évolution de la construction du discours archéologique depuis les années 1960 et les travaux de Roger Grosjean.

The Malay World is a region of much greater indigenous socio-cultural complexity than the label would suggest. In addition to speakers of Austronesian-derived Malayic languages in the Peninsula, Sumatra and coastal Borneo, there are some fifteen ethnolinguistic groups who speak Mon-Khmer languages. Historically, these indigenous populations have followed a variety of appropriative modes, including nomadic foraging (forest, strand and maritime), farming (swidden, swamp and irrigated), lake and maritime fishing, the collecting of forest and maritime products for trade, and long-distance inter-regional trading. Their socio-political circumstances have ranged from tribal, through peasants and hereditary state-linked elites linked to long-distance trade, to citizens of modern nation-states. The influence of the various centres of civilization that were present in the region in pre-modern times was also of key importance: coastal trading states, colonial-response states, inland sacred-city (or ‘middle kingdom’) states and cultural suppletion (or mainland migration) states. While some of these were nested into mandala-like or ‘galactic’ polities, the others had quite different consequences. Egalitarianism and ranking in the region both derive in large measure from the emergence of certain structural features – concerning relative-age, unifiliative bias, preferential marriage patterns, and so on – all serving to maintain mutually distinctive societal regimes within the broader regional framework. Earlier theories explained this array as resulting from distinct migratory ‘waves’, but current evidence (from archaeology, linguistics, kinship and social organization, religion, genetics, and other disciplines) suggests that it emerged mostly indigenously through a series of deliberate mutual adjustments, both assimilatory and dissimilatory, between populations that were each seeking mutual advantages vis-à-vis each other. The paper reviews previous work on the topic, and discusses the mechanisms by which the distinctive Melayu form of social organization emerged out of a more generally Malayic one.

Bronze ornaments of the Nordic Bronze Age (neck collars, belt plates, pins and tutuli) were elaborate objects that served as status symbols to communicate social hierarchy. The magnificent metalwork studied here dates from 1500-1100 BC. An interdisciplinary investigation of the artefacts was adopted to elucidate their manufacture and origin, resulting in new insights into metal craft in northern Europe during the Bronze Age. Based on the habitus concept, which situates the craftsmen within their social and technological framework, individual artefact characteristics and metalworking techniques can be used to identify different craft practices, even to identify individual craftsmen. The conclusions drawn from this offer new insights into the complex organisation of metalcraft in the production of prestige goods across different workshops. Several kinship-based workshops on Jutland, in the Lüneburg Heath and Mecklenburg, allow us to conclude that the bronze objects were a display of social status and hierarchy controlled by, and produced for, the elite – as is also seen in the workshops on Zealand. Within the two main metalworking regions, Zealand and central Lower Saxony, workshops can be defined as communities of practice that existed with an extended market and relations with the local elite. Attached craft, in the sense that the craftspeople fully depended on a governing institution and produced artefacts as a manifestation of political expression, was only detected on Zealand between 1500-1300 BC.

The investigation presented here showed that overall results could not be achieved when concentrating only on one aspect of metalwork. Highly skilled craft is to be found in every kind of workshop, as well as an intensive labour input. Only when considering skill in relation to labour input and also taking into account signs of apprenticeship and cross-craft techniques, as well as the different categories of mistakes in crafting, can a stable image of craft organisation be created.

This paper focuses on the analysis of the cemetery of Demircihöyük-Sarıket, for which exists one of the largest Early Bronze Age funerary datasets published to date in Anatolia. The size and quality of the sample allow the dataset to be approached quantitatively, to determine both normative and anomalous funerary practices, and to detect distinct patterns of burial treatment for different segments of the population represented in the cemetery. Despite the small size of the community (ca 100–130 people), the results suggest a rather complex picture, in which the choice of specific burial containers, the relative wealth of grave assemblages and the selection of particular sets of items were dependent on differences in the age, gender, occupation and achieved status of the deceased. Comparison with other contemporary funerary assemblages helps to place Demircihöyük-Sarıket and these community-scale observations within their wider cultural context in central Anatolia.

The primary focus of this article is on the so-called Negritos of Peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand, but attention is also paid to other parts of Southeast Asia. I present a survey of current views on the “negrito” phenotype—is it single or many? If the phenotype is many (as now seems likely), it must have resulted from parallel evolution in the several different regions where it has been claimed to exist. This would suggest (contrary to certain views that have been expressed on the basis of very partial genetic data) that the phenotype originated recently and by biologically well-authenticated processes from within the neighbouring populations. Whole-genome and physical-anthropological research currently support this view. Regardless of whether the negrito phenotype is ancient or recent—and to the extent that it retains any valid biological reality (which is worth questioning)—explanations are still needed for its continued distinctiveness. In the Malay Peninsula, a distinctive “Semang” societal pattern followed by most, but not all, so-called Negritos may have been responsible for this by shaping familial, breeding and demographic patterns to suit the two main modes of environmental appropriation that they have followed, probably for some millennia: nomadic foraging in the forest, and facultative dependence on exchange or labour relations with neighbouring populations. The known distribution of “negritos” in the Malay Peninsula is limited to areas within relatively easy reach of archaeologically authenticated premodern transpeninsular trading and portage routes, as well as of other non-negrito, Aslian-speaking populations engaged in swidden farming. This suggests that their continued distinctiveness has resulted from a wish to maintain a complementary advantage vis-à-vis other, less specialised populations. Nevertheless, a significant degree of discordance exists between the associated linguistic, societal-tradition and biological patterns, which suggests that other factors have also been at play.

During the Late Bronze Age and Early Pre-Roman Iron Age the landscape of Northwestern Europe underwent great changes. The landscape was opened up and to a large extent parceled into extensive systems of fields, the hitherto scattered settlements were nucleated into village-like structures, and large linear structures that cut through the landscape appear to mark borders between territories. This process is particularly visible in Jutland, but does it apply to the rest of Denmark and Scandinavia? And if not, what are the reasons for these apparent differences?

The origin and early development of social stratification is essentially an archaeological problem. The impressive advance of archaeological research has revealed that, first and foremost, the pre-eminence of stratified or class society in today’s world is the result of a long social struggle. This volume advances the archaeological study of social organisation in Prehistory, and more specifically the rise of social complexity in European Prehistory. Within the wider context of world Prehistory, in the last 30 years the subject of early social stratification and state formation has been a key subject on interest in Iberian Prehistory. This book illustrates the differing forms of resistances, the interplay between change and continuity, the multiple paths to and from social complexity, and the ‘failures’ of states to form in Prehistory. It also engages with broader questions, such as: when did social stratification appear in western European Prehistory? What factors contributed to its emergence and consolidation? What are the relationships between the notions of social complexity, social inequality, social stratification and statehood? And what are the archaeological indicators for the empirical analysis of these issues? Focusing on Iberia, but with a permanent connection to the wider geographical framework, this book presents, for the first time, a chronologically comprehensive, up-to-date approach to the issue of state formation in prehistoric Iberia.

The Late Iron Age coinage of England has long been recognised as an invaluable potential source of information about pre-Roman Britain, although its purpose has been much debated and never clearly established. Most research using this source material has been either detailed numismatic studies, which seek to categorise and tabulate the types of coin and order them chronologically based on stylistic change, or more general attempts to draw out meaning from the imagery or inscriptions on the coins. In Made for Trade, John Talbot presents the findings of a decade-long investigation that has challenged many pre-conceptions about the period. The coinage of the Iceni in East Anglia was used as the raw material with a view to establishing its original purpose and what it can tell us about society and the use of coinage in the Late Iron Age of this region. A die-study was performed on every known example – over 10,000 – coins. Each coin was created by a metal pellet being struck by two dies, and the die-study sought to identify the dies used in each of the 20,000 strikes. Because dies wear, change and are replaced, this enabled definitive chronologies to be constructed and the underlying organisation of the coinage to be fully appreciated for the first time. It is believed to be one of the largest such studies ever attempted and the first of this scale for a British Iron Age coinage. Talbot further explores production, weight and metal content as the coinage evolved, the use of imagery and inscriptions, and patterns of hoarding. These various threads demonstrate that the coinage was economic in nature and reflected development of a more sophisticated monetary society than had previously been thought possible, contradicting many previous assumptions.

In this paper the author assembles the evidence for Mesolithic dwelling places surviving as posts, floors and assemblages. This evidence can be used to show how space was organised, where men and women slept, and how some of the implied family relationships anticipated Neolithic practice.

In this paper I analyse the funerary ideology of the communities which occupied the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula between c. 3300 and 850 cal BC (Copper and Bronze Age). The definition and critical discussion of the funerary patterns and their evolution over this long period is used as the basis for an analysis of the evolution of social inequality. With this aim in mind, three main groups of evidence are used, corresponding to (i) funerary spaces and architectures, (ii) grave goods deposited as part of the funerary ritual, and (iii) symbology associated with the architecture and portable artefacts. As a result, an interpretation of the dialectic evolution of elements of continuity and rupture within the funerary ideology, and its significance in terms of social relationships, is presented.

Cultural values and human ecology primarily concern power and history; "systems" emerge only when conducting studies on a prehistoric time-scale. The Malay Peninsula provides linguistic, archaeological and sociological evidence for the long-term maintenance, through deliberate but culturally mystified political action, of three distinct cultural régimes ("Semang", "Senoi", "Malayic"), each devised out of the same common matrix to make one mode of life (respectively: foraging, swiddening, collecting-for-trade) seem most desirable. Peninsular kinship patterns are shown to constitute a set of linkages between (a) marriage rules, subsistence modes, relations of production, (b) local-group organisation, (c) inter-cultural boundary mechanisms, and (d) sedentism versus nomadism, that have served for centuries and possibly millennia to embed the politically desired values in concrete patterns of on-the-ground social organisation. [Note (2019): I have since rejected the dates suggested in this paper for prehistoric developments in the Peninsula as being far too early.]

Long-term data are fundamental to the explanation of socio-cultural situations. The various indigenous societal traditions of the Malay Peninsula (Semang, Senoi, Malayic) have resulted from mutual in situ cultural assimilation and dissimilation over the past five thousand years in response to the emergence of foraging, farming and collecting-for-trade as modes of subsistence. Ecological, archaeological, biogeographical, population-genetic, demographic, sociological, linguistic and protohistorical data support the view that the Peninsula’s peculiar geographical circumstances had much to do with the socio-cultural developments that it witnessed. The paper presents a new synthesis of recent scholarly research on the Peninsula, expressly rejecting the race-based migrational approaches still prevalent in general scholarship on the area.

The different types of socio-religious patterns followed in Southeast Asia relate directly to certain institutionalised ways of orientating people’s apperceptions and ways of talking about the world. However, and despite what much of the culturological literature seems to imply, the different modes of orientation are not simply givens, emerging out of nothing. Rather, they have historical and social contexts – in particular, those set by the processes through which the pre-modern states were brought into being, which have had a continuing influence on these patterns right into modern times. At least four kinds of early state are recognisable in Southeast Asia: coastal trading states, colonial-response states, inland sacred-city (or ‘middle kingdom’) states, and cultural suppletion (or mainland migration) states. The modern nation-state also has a profound bearing on these issues.
The chapter indicates how various domains of culture and society in Southeast Asia – such as language structure, social organisation, modal personality, religious patterns, ecological types – may be interrelated, even though they have usually been treated separately. The argument is not a cultural-determinist one. Rather, it is concerned with the contextual placing of the different modes of orientation and the ways in which those modes have been used by people in attempting to change or regulate their society.

The paper discusses the use of ethnoarchaeology in the interpretation of prehistoric hunter-gatherer cultures, and takes as a case study the application of observations made on the Evenk reindeer hunters (Olenok area, Siberia) to interpreting patterning in the Late Glacial Hamburgian archaeological record of northern Europe. It is argued that a focus on repeatedly appearing cultural features seen in relation to a holistic framework which incorporates the entire range of social behaviours can form a useful interface between archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, because it allows an integrated approach to phenomena with both material and spiritual aspects. The latter are too often ignored in ethnoarchaeology despite their evident impact on spatial patterning in the material record of contemporary hunter-gatherers. It is also suggested that archaeology and ethnoarchaeology should be used in an interactive way, including the development of archaeological strategies for checking the ethnoarchaeological extrapolations.

The main topics of this thesis are the burial practices carried out at the time of early Christianity in Norway and how the burial practices relate to the burial regulations given in the provincial laws (Gulating, Frostating, Eidsivating, Borgarting). The study is based on the data collected from the examination of the skeletal material from four different graveyards and the data collected from the archaeological records from the different sites (St. Mary’s church in Bergen, Public Library site in Trondheim, Hamar cathedral and the St. Peter’s church in Tønsberg). Questions regarding sexual segregation and social stratification of the graveyards have been the main interest of this research, but other features which could have influenced the place of burial have also been touched upon: age, family relations, foreigners.

It has been shown that the sexes were not treated equally on three of the four graveyards: there was no evidence suggesting that the sexes were ever segregated on the graveyard for the St. Mary’s church in Bergen. It has also become apparent that the separation of the sexes was adapted to the individual graveyard and did not necessarily follow the north-south division prescribed in the Eidsivating law and a pattern which has been shown on many graveyards in Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Greenland.

It has been argued that pathological conditions, especially degenerative changes to the joints and vertebrae, can be good indicators of social differences. Based on the distribution of these pathological conditions, strong evidence has been presented in favour of the graveyards having been socially stratified. It seems very likely that an individual’s social status decided a person’s placement on the graveyard at the Public Library site in Trondheim and for the St. Peter’s church in Tønsberg.

This  paper  deals  with  the  gathering  practices  in  Eastern-Central  Sweden  during  the  middle  and  late Mesolithic.  Following  the  post-processual  paradigm,  the  idea  of  women  as  hunters  has  come  to  be accepted.  However,  men  as  gatherers  seem  to  have  gotten  less  attention.  The  aim  of  this  paper  is  to understand  who  the  Mesolithic  gatherer  was.  By  using  James  J.  Gibson’s  (2015)  theory  of  affordances  on the  region’s  most  common  biofact,  the  hazelnut  (Corylus avellana),  I  argue  that  the  social  organisation  of women  as  gatherers  and  men  as  hunters  is  an  incorrect  interpretation  for  the  region.  The  affordances of  the  hazelnut  rather  speak  for  the  gatherers  collectively  being  the  hunters,  the  fishers,  the  women, the  men,  the  children,  and  the  old—gathering  is  not  a  set  of  practices  that  belongs  to  a  social  group,  but a set of practices performed by all members of the society.

Keywords:  Hunter-gatherers,  Hunter-fisher-gatherers,  Mesolithic,  Social  Organisation,  Eastern-Central Sweden, Theory of Affordances, Chain of Affordances, Hazelnut

Despite centuries of research, much about the barbarian migrations that took place between the fourth and sixth centuries in Europe remains hotly debated. To better understand this key era that marks the dawn of modern European societies, we obtained ancient genomic DNA from 63 samples from two cemeteries (from Hungary and Northern Italy) that have been previously associated with the Longobards, a barbarian people that ruled large parts of Italy for over 200 years after invading from Pannonia in 568 CE. Our dense cemetery-based sampling revealed that each cemetery was primarily organized around one large pedigree, suggesting that biological relationships played an important role in these early medieval societies. Moreover, we identified genetic structure in each cemetery involving at least two groups with different ancestry that were very distinct in terms of their funerary customs. Finally, our data are consistent with the proposed long-distance migration from Pannonia to Northern ...