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Results for hierarchy:

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hierarchy

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any organization of a group of items into a series of classes ranked from high to low, each successively higher class having fewer members. In a social hierarchy, the ranking would reflect differences in power, prestige, or access to economic resources. In a settlement hierarchy, the individual sites might be organized on the basis of population size or number of functions fulfilled into a series of classes such as town, village, and hamlet.

site hierarchy

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The site size and functional differences within a group of roughly contemporary sites -- possibly indicating different economic arrangements, political hierarchy, etc.

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Arawak

CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A number of linguistically associated native groups -- the Antillean Arawak or Taino -- who inhabited the villages of the Greater Antilles and parts of mainland South America. They were slash-and-burn agriculturists who cultivated cassava and maize. The people were arranged in social ranks and were ruled by chiefs whose religion centered on a hierarchy of nature spirits and ancestors. Pottery of Saladoid type is found in from western Venezuela to the West Indies, and in the northern islands there is a ceramic continuity from Saladoid ware to insular Arawak. The Arawak were driven out of the Lesser Antilles by the Carib shortly before the appearance of Columbus and the Spanish, but they still numbered in the millions at that time. Since the Arawakan language is not found to the north or in Mesoamerica, it is likely that these people came to the islands from the south.

Aspero

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Preceramic site on the north-central coast of Peru, dating to 4360-3950 BP. It is one of the largest Preceramic settlements known in the Andes and it had a complex social hierarchy. Six platform mounds and other structures include rooms with artifacts, textiles, plant material, clay figurines, and feathers.

Aztec

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mexica, Tenochcas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last pre-Columbian civilization to enter the Valley of Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization in c 12 AD, who built a magnificent capital at Tenochtitlán and were later conquered by the Spaniards (1521). They called themselves the Mexica or Tenochca and were the dominant political group of the Late Post-Classic Period. The people spoke Nahuatl. Their origin is obscure, partly because of the deliberate destruction of their own records, but tradition says that in 1193 AD the last of seven Chichimec tribes left Aztlan , a mythical birthplace somewhere north or west of Mexico, and filtered south. For a while they lived around Lake Texococo, but in 1345 they were allowed to found Tenochtitlán (under present-day Mexico City) on some unoccupied islands. By 1428 Tenochtitlán, Texococo, and Tlacopan formed an independent state which controlled most of present-day Mexico from the desert zone in the north to Oaxaca in the south, with extensions as far as the Guatemalan border -- all through military expansion. By inclination and training the Aztecs were militaristic, and a person's status depended on his success as a warrior. The chief god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was a war god who required the blood of sacrificial victims, and only constant warfare supplied the altar of the god. Human sacrifice was necessary also to ensure the daily rising of the sun. Other major deities were Huitzilpotchtli (the warrior god and chief deity of Tenochtitlan), Texcatlipoca (god of night, death and destruction), Xipe Totec (god of spring and renewal), and Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent (god of self-sacrifice and inventor of agriculture and the calendar). Tenochtitlán became a great imperial city, so large that it could not be self-sufficient but had to rely on tributes from its provinces. Luxury goods and necessities were brought to the city, and craftsmen produced jewelry, turquoise mosaics, featherwork, and carved stone. Mold-made clay figurines were common, and the black-on-orange pottery was decorated with geometrical designs and stylized creatures. Little architecture or painting survived the Spanish conquest of 1521. Copies of several books have been preserved (as the Dresden Codex). Aztec society was set in a clearly defined hierarchical class system. At the top was the ruling class (pipil) from whom and by whom the emperors were chosen. The mass of the population were freeman (machuale) and under them were the serfs (mayeques) and then at the bottom the slaves. Most people were of the landholding group called the calpulli, which had its own internal hierarchy. Change of social class was possible through state service in the military and sometimes through merchant activity. The merchants (pochteca) served as early-reconnaissance and espionage groups. The arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of Tenochtitlán after a 90-day siege marked the end of Aztec dominance.

central place theory

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: central-place theory
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: In geography, a theory concerning the size and distribution of central places (settlements) within a system or region. The primary purpose of a settlement or market town, according to central-place theory, is the provision of goods and services for the surrounding market area. Such towns are centrally located and may be called central places. As applied to archaeology, the theory states that human settlements will space themselves evenly across a landscape as a function of the availability of natural resources, communication and transportation routes, and other factors. Eventually, these will evolve into a hierarchy of settlements of different size that depend on one another. Central-place theory attempts to illustrate how settlements locate in relation to one another, the amount of market area (goods and services) a central place can control, and why some central places function as hamlets, villages, towns, or cities. The theory was first developed by German geographer Walter Christaller. Christaller's theory concentrated on centers of different order, since in a complex system there will be some larger centers offering more specialized services to a wider area; there may indeed be many levels of such centers in a complex settlement hierarchy. Christaller's model has been modified by other geographers, especially August Losch. The theory may suggest ways in which the factors have affected the settlement pattern. Central place theory has found useful applications in archaeology as a preliminary heuristic device.

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.

Gash

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of sites in the Atbara region of Sudan with a food-producing economy and human burials indicating a social hierarchy. The main site is Mahal Teglinos.

higher-order central place

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A large and functionally diverse community in a regional hierarchy of communities differentiated by number, size, and function.

Khok Phanom Di

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric settlement in south-central Thailand with radiocarbon dates of c 2000-1400 BC, though no metal has been found. It had a rich potterymaking and exporting tradition. The burials indicate social hierarchy.

lower-order central place

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A small and functionally simple community in a regional hierarchy of communities differentiated by number, size, and function.

Mokram

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A people which succeeded the Gash in eastern Sudan c 3300 BP. There was domesticated stock, sorghum, and possibly settlement hierarchy.

rank

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The position held by an individual on the basis of his status within a society where statuses are not all equal, but are graded into a hierarchical structure. A society with such inequalities of status is called a ranked society. A rank is a distinct class or level within a hierarchy.

redistribution

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.

social organization

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The structural hierarchy of a society, first divided into smaller social units, called groups, within which are recognized social positions, or statuses. The term also refers to appropriate behavior patterns for these positions, or roles.

type-variety-mode analysis

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: type-variety system
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A taxonomic classification of pottery based on stylistic attributes that defines a hierarchy of modes and varieties (minimal units), types, groups, complexes, and spheres (maximal units)

Xibeigang

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Hsi-pei-kang]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hebei Province, China, of the Royal Cemetery of the Late Shang, with seven shaft tombs with wooden-chamber burials and human sacrifices. There are also over 2000 small pit-graves with human sacrifices. The hierarchy of burials at this and other cemeteries in the area reflected the social organization of the living. The large pit tombs, some nearly 42 feet deep, were furnished with four ramps and massive grave chambers for the kings. Only a few undisturbed elite burials have been unearthed, the most notable being that of Fu Hao, a consort of Wu-ting. Her relatively small grave contained 468 bronze objects of the Anyang style, 775 jades, carved bone objects, and more than 6,880 cowries -- suggesting how great the wealth placed in the far larger royal tombs must have been.

XTENT modeling

CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Technique used to generate a settlement hierarchy which assigns territories to centers based on their scale, assuming that the size of each center is directly proportional to its area of influence. It is said that it overcomes the limitations of both central place theory and Thiessen polygons and that hypothetical political maps may be constructed from survey data.