Early Power Structures Lecture 28
If you ¿nd infants that are buried with a lot of wealth around them, then you know not only that there were wealthy people in that society, but you know something else as well. You know that wealth could be inherited. In other words, this is not just one individual who built up their wealth during their lifetime; they could pass on their wealth to their children. And that suggests the existence of institutionalized hierarchies of wealth and power.
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he previous lecture described the appearance of the ¿rst tributetaking states and offered a simple de¿nition of power. Now we ask: How did the ¿rst and simplest power structures evolve? The evidence we need to answer this question comes mainly from archaeology and anthropology. Archaeological research offers many indirect hints about early power relations. The relative size and wealth of houses and burials hints at inequalities of wealth and power. An example is the huge burial mount of Arzhan in the Inner Asian steppes, dating from the 8th century B.C.E. Such structures demonstrate the presence of a very signi¿cant degree of institutionalized power, enough to mobilize the resources of many hundreds of people, some of whom were required to sacri¿ce their own lives to honor a dead leader. Rich infant burials demonstrate the presence of inherited wealth and status. Evidence such as the terra-cotta army buried with the ¿rst ruler of a uni¿ed China, or extensive forti¿cations and walls, shows the presence of armies and organized coercion. The stone ¿gures (or ahu) of Easter Island, or Britain’s Stonehenge represent more modest forms of “monumental architecture.” Anthropological studies of modern “early Agrarian” societies, such as those of Melanesia or the Amazon basin, suggest ways of interpreting the archaeological evidence. But we must always remember that these are modern models and we may be missing important differences between them and the ¿rst early Agrarian societies. Why did power relations develop so rapidly in the early Agrarian era? The key was population growth. As communities became larger, more productive, and more interdependent, new problems arose, and also new forms of 127
