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Process and Agency in Early State Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Kent V. Flannery
Kent V. Flannery
Affiliation:
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
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Abstract

Most pristine states formed in the context of competing chiefdoms, when one of the latter succeeded in incorporating its rivals into a larger polity. Some of the processes evident during state formation include chiefly cycling, biased transmission, territorial expansion, and the gaining of competitive advantage. In some archaeological circles, however, it has become fashionable to reject ecological, demographic, and technological processes, and seek agent-based or ideological explanations for state formation. This essay, delivered as the tenth McDonald Lecture, examines five agents who modified ideologies and created states from chiefdoms. It concludes that process and agency are complementary, rather than antithetical, perspectives; thus the latter is unlikely to make the former obsolete.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1999

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