10 Social Organization

	Band	Segmentary Society	Chiefdom	State
Total Numbers	Less than 100	Up to a few 1000	5000-20,000+	20,000+
Social Organization				Class-based hierarchy under king or emperor; Armies
Economic Organization			Central accumulation & redistribution;Some craft specialization
Religious Organization		Religious leaders;Calendrical rituals
Contemporary Examples	Inuit; San; Australian Aborigines	Pueblos; New Guinea Highlanders; Nuer and Dinka	NW Coast Native Americans; 18th century Polynesia	All modern states
Settlement Pattern				Urban: cities, towns; frontier defenses; roads
Architecture	See Figure 10.1 below: Mezhirich mammoth hut	See Figure 10:2 below: Çatalhöyük Permanent huts; Burial Mounds; Shrines	See Figure 10.3 below: Stonehenge	See Figure 10.4 below: Chichén Itzá
Archaeological Examples			Early metal working and Formative societies

                                                                      Table 10.1: Social Organization Chart

 

 

What is the four-fold classification systems of societies, and who was the anthropologist that developed it?

Describe each one of the classification systems in detail.

1)

2)

3)

4)

Define social inequality. How can mortuary analysis (the study of human burials and cemeteries) be used to investigate social inequality in the past?

Settlement pattern analysis is the most common way to investigate social organization of the past.  However, depending on the type of society, the survey and excavation methods can vary.  Describe the data collection methods of a mobile hunter-gatherer society below, e.g. most hunter-gatherers live in band societies, what type of architecture do band societies have? What else?

In archaeology the terms “gender” and “sex” are very different from each other. Describe why below.