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Results for chiefdom:

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chiefdom

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A form of sociopolitical organization in which their is a chief who is the central authority over a social ranking or hierarchy. Individuals' status is determined by birth and closeness of relationship to the chief. The chief occupies a central role socially, politically, and economically. The central authority enables considerable human effort to be mobilized and directed, often into the building of large public works such as monuments or irrigation systems and in the establishment of mechanisms for distributing goods and services. A chiefdom generally has a permanent ritual and ceremonial center, as well as being characterized by local specialization in crafts.

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Easter Island

SYNONYM: Rapa Nui
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The easternmost inhabited island of Polynesia, a small volcanic one, about 2500 miles from South America and 1250 miles from Pitcairn Island, its nearest inhabited Polynesian neighbors. It was settled by the Polynesians early in 1st millennium AD and developed a horticultural economy. By 700 AD, the inhabitants built large stone platforms (ahu), some of cut stone, and between 1000-1700 AD these platforms supported rows of huge stone statues (moai), some with separate top knots. Shaped by stone tools, as there is no metal on the island, from quarries in volcanic craters, there are about 300 platforms and about 600 statues. By about 1700, the warrior chiefdoms were fighting and all the statues were toppled from their pedestals. The platforms were used for human burial in stone chambers inserted into the stonework. There is a village of stone houses and many petroglyphs. The Europeans discovered Easter Island in 1722, after which the culture and population. The islanders also carved on wooden boards in an undeciphered script, Rongorongo. Easter Island culture represents the cultural development an isolated human community.

Formative

SYNONYM: Pre-Classic, Formative period; Preclassic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A cultural stage in North America when agriculture and village settlement were developed, accompanied by pottery, weaving, stonecarving, and ceremonial objects and architecture. In the New World, especially Mesoamerica, it is also called the Pre-Classic period and preceded the Classic period. The period was also characterized by initial complex societies (chiefdoms) and long-distance trade networks. In Mesoamerica, it is divided into Early (2000-1000 BC), Middle (1000-300 BC), and Late (300 BC-300 AD). In Andea South America, the period is usually framed within the period 1800-1 BC -- and includes the Initial Period and Early Horizon. It begins with the introduction of ceramics. This occurred c 7600 bp in Amazonia and c 5200 bp in northwest Columbia.

Heuneburg, The

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age fortified site and hillfort of the Hallstatt period on the upper Danube in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The site was the center of the dominant Celtic chiefdom in southwest Germany c 600-500 BC. Wine amphorae and Attic Black-Figure pottery were imported from the Greek city of Massalia, demonstrating Heuneburg's wealth. There are nearby princely burials of the same date, including the rich Hohmichele tumulus. This covered a timber mortuary house containing the body of an archer accompanied by a wooden wagon and precious offerings. The site has five main building phases, the most remarkable of which was the second, when the traditional timber-framed construction was replaced by a Greek type of construction, with a bastioned wall built of mud-brick on stone foundations.

Kolomoki

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large multi-mound site in southern Georgia, US, that includes burial mounds and a platform mound from the latter half of the 1st century AD. It seems to have thrived in the period between the decline of the Woodland Tradition and the emergence of the Mississippian. Elaborately worked funerary vessels and grave goods such as copper ornaments and shell beads attest to ceremonial burial practice. There are indications of a chiefdom organization.

Leg Piekarski

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rich burial site in west-central Poland, dated to 1st-2nd century AD, referred to as 'princes' graves'. There are elaborate silver and bronze vessels among the grave goods. The burials are evidence of the emergence of local hereditary chiefdoms at that time.

Moundville

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mississippian site in Alabama comprised of 20, mostly platform, mounds, with over 3000 burials. The site reached its peak c 1250 and it was probably part of a chiefdom. There is much evidence for the Southern Cult.

multilinear cultural evolution

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A theory of cultural evolution that sees each human culture evolving in its own way by adaptation to diverse environments. It is sometimes divided into four broad stages of evolving of social organization: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state-organized society. It is often defined by these four general levels of complexity rather than seeing all societies as pursuing a single course.

Parmana

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of the Middle Orinoco drainage, Venezuela, which shifted from root crops to seed crop cultivation (mainly maize) between 800-400 BC. The cultivation of maize gave rise to an increase in population and provided the basis for the emergence of chiefdom-led societies.

Polynesia

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A vast region of scattered islands in the central Pacific occupied by closely related ethnic groups, falling mostly within a triangle made up of the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Western Polynesia was settled by Austronesian speakers from Southeast Asia (Lapita culture) around 1500 BC, and migrations progressed throughout the triangle until New Zealand was reached c 900 AD. The Polynesians are a homogeneous population in terms of language and social organization, which developed into powerful chiefdoms in the larger islands. The Polynesian economy was based on tuber and fruit horticulture. Pottery production ceased in Western Polynesia c 300 AD and was never present in most eastern islands nor in New Zealand. Western Polynesia consists of Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu; Eastern Polynesia includes the Society, Cook, Austral, Marquesas, Tuamotu, and Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island, and New Zealand.

redistribution

SYNONYM: redistributive exchange
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A mode of primitive exchange in which the operation was directed and controlled by some central organizing authority; a complex process that was a critical part of the evolution of civilization. Goods are received or appropriated by the central authority and subsequently some of them are sent by that authority to other locations. It might involve the physical collection and pooling of locally produced items and their subsequent reallocation, or merely control the flow without central collection. Storage facilities and a system of record-keeping are often associated with the central power. The goods exchanged may be local products, which would permit some degree of craft specialization, since the specialists will be able to depend on the central authority for the supply of all necessities. The products received in return for these exports may be treated as prestige items and made available to only a restricted number of the local people in the upper levels of the social hierarchy. Redistribution is often associated with societies organized as chiefdoms with a central authority and marked differences in social ranking.

Society Islands

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major archipelago in eastern Polynesia in the central South Pacific, divided into the Windward (Tahiti and Moorea) and Leeward (Raiatea, Huahine, Borabora, Tahaa, Maupiti). The islands were settled around 500 AD by Polynesians who developed a number of chiefdoms. The islands were first recorded by Europeans after 1767, when they were claimed for Britain by Captain Samuel Wallis. Important early sites include the Maupiti Burial Ground and the site of Vaito'Otia on Huahine, and later sites are mainly complexes of Marae. The island of Raiatea was regarded as a source of religion and ritual by eastern Polynesians, but by European contact this island had fallen under the control of the neighboring smaller island of Borabora.

sociofact

CATEGORY: term; artifact
DEFINITION: Archaeological data resulting from past human social activities; an object whose primary function is to express or establish social rank, rather than to serve practical or ideological needs. An example is an ax that is used as a symbol of chiefdom rather than as a weapon.

state

SYNONYM: state-organized society
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A form of social organization characterized by a strong central government, socio-economic class divisions, and a market economy; the most complex form of social organization. Leadership is not based on kinship affiliation, though it may be. States are frequently marked by an armed force and a bureaucracy for recordkeeping. They often have very large populations, have cities and monumental architecture. Such a society retains many chiefdom characteristics in elaborated form, but also includes true political power sanctioned by legitimate force, and social integration through concepts of nationality and citizenship usually defined by territorial boundaries. A distinction can be drawn between primary states, those whose origin is independent of any contact with previously existing states, and secondary states, which arise from influences emanating from already established states. In cultural evolutionist models, it ranks second only to the empire as the most complex societal developmental stage.

Tairona

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late prehistoric culture of northeast Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Taironas were organized into small political states (chiefdoms) and had one of the most advanced cultures of the Caribbean mainland. Their crafts were ceramic ware (black and red painted with zoomorphic design and appliqué); stone utensils (metates); bone and shell ornaments; and beads, buttons, and jewelry made of gold, copper, and gold-copper alloy (tumbaga). Most sites, like Pueblito and Buritaca-200, have hundreds of stone foundations for circular houses. There are also remains of tombs, stone-built retaining walls, bridges, stairways, roads, agricultural terraces, and irrigation canals. A central feature of most villages was a ceremonial building, usually on a platform-mound, and often of dressed masonry. The town site at Pueblito had all these features and, in addition, paved streets, the remains of large irrigation projects, and urn burials. Specialized funerary vessels are often modeled with life forms which are similar to Mesoamerican motifs. Populations in the thousands occupied Tairona towns and villages at the time of the Spanish conquest.

Tonga

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An archipelago of 169 islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (western Polynesia) inhabited at least 3,000 years ago by Austronesian-speaking peoples who made elaborately decorated Lapita pottery similar to that found on Fiji. It was settled, like neighboring Samoa, by Lapita colonists in the late 2nd millennium BC. Tonga maintains a pottery sequence throughout the 1st millennium BC, after which pottery manufacture ceases. After 1000 AD, large monuments appear which are related to the growth of the powerful centralized chiefdoms.

Viking

SYNONYM: Norseman, Northman
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The inhabitants of Scandinavia from about 700-1100 AD, great boat builders and navigators who settled all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Term embraces the Norse, who raided and settled northern Britain, Iceland, Greenland, and North America; the Swedes, who established a trade route from Baltic through Russia to Byzantium and beyond; and the Danes, who were a serious threat in England and Ireland. Viking raiders were descended from the native peoples of Migration Period Scandinavia. In 865, their raids of England led to their conquest of most of the eastern part of the country, with their capital at York. At the beginning of the 10th century, Iceland was settled, then Greenland, and even the North American coast (Vinland) was reached, culminating in the settlement of Anse au Meadow in Newfoundland. Some Viking raids even penetrated the Mediterranean by way of Gibraltar. During this time, the many Scandinavian chiefdoms shared a similar material culture and were involved in trading far beyond the Baltic Sea.