weeks 5 and 6 socy200

Classic framework (4 tenets)

Relies on evolutionary theory; emphasizes technological determinism; treats societal development as a straight line; argues that complexity and inequality develop together in a linear way

Emergent framework (4 tenets)

Criticizes overreliance on evolution as an explanation; privileges human imagination and choice; examines the messiness of societal development; asks us to reconsider the questions we ask about the human past

Two sources of evidence that complicate the picture of hunter-gatherers

1) Upper Paleolithic megastructures and mammoth houses; 2) a forgotten ethnography: Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Nambikwara

Göbekli Tepe: location and date

Southeastern Turkey; about 9600–8200 BCE; built by "hunter-gatherers" before farming became their main way of life

Göbekli Tepe vs. the classic framework

The classic framework says farming technologies cause social complexity. Yet Göbekli Tepe, built before farming, has large circular and oval buildings, T-shaped limestone pillars, and carvings of wild animals.

Göbekli Tepe: evidence of complex social organization

Stones had to be carved and moved; construction required teamwork; the buildings may have hosted gatherings or rituals

Why Göbekli Tepe matters

Monument-building happened before widespread farming; hunter-gatherers could organize major projects; the past was more complex than a simple timeline

Dnieper Basin

Borderlands between eastern Ukraine and western Russia, where hunter-gatherers built circular structures from mammoth bones and tusks. Open question: were these houses, gathering places, or both?

Locations of the megastructure / mammoth-house sites

Göbekli Tepe: southeastern Turkey. Dnieper Basin: Ukraine–Russia borderlands. Yudinovo: Bryansk Oblast, western Russia. Mezhirich: Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine. Kostenki: Voronezh Oblast, Russia.

What mammoth structures looked like

Large bones formed a circular or oval outline on the ground; some were several meters wide. One ring at Kostenki 11 was about 12.5 meters across and held bones from at least 60 mammoths.

Why build with mammoth remains?

Large bones were sturdy and could anchor a structure; long curved tusks could serve as supports; they provided material where wood was scarce in Ice Age landscapes; collecting and arranging them required planning and shared labor.

What mammoth houses show about social organization

Hunter-gatherers could build large, lasting structures. This complicates the idea that major construction began only after farming; a society didn't need farms or cities to organize an impressive building project.

Yudinovo

A repeatedly used camp, mainly occupied ~18,200–17,600 years ago. Five major mammoth-bone accumulations, hearths, pits, and stone, bone, and ivory tools. Debate: dwellings or deliberately arranged deposits of remains?

Mezhirich

Present-day Ukraine. Four large mammoth-bone structures (largest about 7 m across), with nearby hearths, pits, and tools. New dating places one structure at ~18,248–17,764 years ago.

Kostenki

A group of sites (not one settlement) near the Don River in present-day Russia. Its record spans a much longer part of the Upper Paleolithic and includes tools, hearths, pits, and mammoth-bone structures.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1944)

Anthropologist who wrote "The Social and Psychological Aspects of Chieftainship" about the Nambikwara of northwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil (Amazon Basin)

Why the Nambikwara matter

Outsiders saw their few possessions and assumed they were "simple" or a window into prehistory. Lévi-Strauss rejected that: they lived in contact with farmers, towns, and the modern state.

Nambikwara: two seasons, two ways of life

Dry season: small mobile foraging bands, hunting and gathering; chiefs could give orders and make quick decisions. Rainy season: larger settled villages, gardening; chiefs relied on persuasion and cooperation.

What did Nambikwara chiefs actually do?

In mobile bands they directed activities and handled crises (a hard river crossing or hunt). In villages they attracted followers, organized work, mediated disputes, and cared for people in need. Neither permanent dictators nor merely symbolic leaders.

The surprising reversal (Nambikwara)

The common expectation is small foraging groups = equality and settled farming communities = hierarchy. Among the Nambikwara, small foraging groups had stronger leadership while larger villages were more egalitarian; arrangements changed with the season, not along a one-way path.

Were early humans naturally equal or naturally hierarchical?

Given the evidence of seasonal duality, neither answer captures the variety of early human societies. Avoid temporal ethnocentrism: early people were able to shape how they lived together.

Temporal ethnocentrism

Judging past peoples by present-day assumptions, e.g., assuming early humans couldn't consciously shape how they lived together

Evidence that complicates the evolutionary story

Complex social organization implied by megastructures and mammoth houses; some exceptionally elaborate or "princely" Upper Paleolithic burials. Together they challenge the image of every Ice Age group as a tiny, uniformly equal band.

The essence of politics (Paleolithic politics)

Our ability to choose and revise social arrangements. All people can imagine how different rules might change how they do things.

Sapient paradox

The idea that society stayed simple for millions of years, with humans in largely egalitarian groups even though they had the tools for more; complexity and hierarchy only emerge with agriculture.

Why the sapient paradox is a red herring

If Paleolithic people could make political choices, why assume our ancestors chose the same way of life for thousands of generations?

Elaborate Ice Age burials

At Sunghir, two boys were buried with thousands of beads and mammoth-ivory lances. At Dolní Věstonice, a triple burial included headdresses and red ochre.

Sunghir beads

Making them may have taken about 10,000 work hours. With grave goods from distant places, they suggest skilled craftwork and far-reaching social networks.

What megastructures and burials do and don't prove

They support skilled crafts and big labor investments, special treatment of some people, large coordinated building projects, and extensive exchange networks. They do not prove a permanent ruling class, that a buried "prince" held political power, that workers were forced, or a centralized state.

Why the pattern of lavish burials matters

They are scattered across long periods and wide distances, with no continuous pattern of palaces, fortifications, or storehouses, so they can't represent enduring, institutional inequality.

Seasonality: social life changed across the year

At one time people dispersed into smaller foraging groups; at another they gathered where food was abundant. Large gatherings could support feasts, rituals, exchange, art, and building projects.

How gatherings explain monuments

Hunter-gatherers cooperated on major projects without living together permanently. Organization tied to seasonal abundance of gazelle and wild plants; people gathered to process food, feast, and build; some enclosures were deliberately filled in. So large monuments don't automatically imply a year-round ruler or state.

Graeber & Wengrow on the great structures (p. 105)

Each had a relatively short lifespan, ending in an enormous feast, after which its walls were rapidly filled in with refuse: "hierarchies raised to the sky, only to be swiftly torn down again." The pattern of seasonal congregation for festive labor seems well established.

What kind of "king"?

If someone held high status at a seasonal gathering, what did that authority mean once people dispersed? The Nambikwara case asks us to distinguish temporary ceremonial status from permanent power over a population.

Complexity and hierarchy (key claim)

Complexity does not always mean permanent hierarchy

The right question about inequality

Not whether inequality existed, but when, where, and for how long particular forms of authority mattered

Putting the being back into human being

Early humans weren't locked into one way of life; they could discuss and organize different kinds of societies. Our capacity for social and moral choice is central to being human.

Classic questions we keep asking

Were our ancestors equal or hierarchical? Are humans naturally cooperative or competitive? Are we basically good or selfish?

Simplified story vs. emerging framework

Simplified: humans naturally tend toward conflict and need strong authority → Emerging: hierarchy is not inevitable. Simplified: humans began innocent and egalitarian and lost it → Emerging: early societies were creative.

Societies as carnival parades

Graeber & Wengrow (2021: 119) describe early social life as a "carnival parade of political forms": groups organized authority in different ways, and arrangements could change or disappear rather than develop steadily into a next stage.

Start of the Holocene

Around 11,600 years ago, global temperatures rose rapidly, beginning the Postglacial (Holocene) era. Warmer climate and more rain made many regions more productive for plants, animals, and people.

A world of greater abundance

The Holocene brought greater biological plenty; plants and animals spread into higher latitudes; environmental change opened new opportunities; humans had settled every continent except Antarctica.

Two major themes of the postglacial period

Diversity and change. Societies developed in many ways in response to local environments.

Classic shift to agriculture

In several regions people moved away from relying mainly on hunting and gathering toward more intensive food production. Agriculture created a more dependable food supply and supported larger populations.

Classic framework: farming causes complex societies

Agriculture laid the foundation for major social developments; larger populations produced cities, more complex cultures, and organized states (e.g., ancient Egypt, the Maya, Rome).

Southwest Asia and farming origins

One of the most important regions for studying the origins of agriculture. The transition from foraging to farming began around 20,000 BC; by about 6000 BC sedentary farming communities were established across the region.

Timeline: Epipaleolithic

c. 20,000–9600 BC: hunter-gatherers increasingly harvest, store, and manage wild foods

Timeline: Younger Dryas

c. 10,800–9600 BC: a cooler, drier climatic reversal

Timeline: Early Neolithic

After c. 9600 BC: settled villages, cultivation, and early animal herding expand. By c. 6000 BC: sedentary farming communities throughout Southwest Asia.

Where did early agriculture happen in Southwest Asia?

A broad region: from the Zagros Mountains of Iraq and western Iran, across the Taurus foothills of southern Turkey, into the Levant and its desert margins. Uplands, foothills, valleys, grasslands, and Mediterranean zones.

Evidence for early agriculture

Excavated settlements; plant remains (archaeobotany); animal remains (archaeozoology); environmental evidence like pollen records; tools, buildings, art, and burials. Research keeps revising ideas about how and where farming began.

Archaeobotany vs. archaeozoology

Archaeobotany studies plant remains; archaeozoology studies animal remains

The "hilly flanks" (Robert Braidwood)

Early agriculture began not mainly in Mesopotamia's low river plains but in the foothills of the Fertile Crescent, whose overlapping habitats let foragers harvest, store, and process wild foods long before full agriculture.

Wild ancestors of crops and animals in Southwest Asia

Crops: wheat, barley, lentils, peas, beans. Animals: sheep, goats, pigs, cattle.

Climate of Southwest Asia

Major geographic and climatic diversity. Wild cereals, legumes, sheep, and goats favored the foothills. Many crops survived hot, dry summers; only 10 inches of mostly winter rain supported growth. Areas near the Mediterranean were refuges in colder, drier periods.

Çatalhöyük: basic facts

Central Anatolia (present-day Turkey), on the Konya Plain. One of the largest known Neolithic settlements in Southwest Asia; shows large, socially complex communities existed long before Mesopotamian cities.

Why Çatalhöyük is important

Discovered in 1958 by British archaeologist James Mellaart; excavated 1961–1965. About 13 hectares (32 acres); ~21 m (69 ft) of occupation debris. Founded around 7300 BC and occupied until at least 6200 BC.

Was Çatalhöyük an early "urban" community?

Early excavators thought it a possible early urban center, ~2,000 years before Mesopotamia; it was large, dense, and culturally elaborate. But it wasn't a city-state in the Mesopotamian sense; it's best understood as a Neolithic "super-community."

Çatalhöyük: location and environment

Konya Plain, once the bed of a huge Pleistocene lake; more than 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above sea level; only about 8–10 inches of annual rain, marginal for dry farming

Why Çatalhöyük's location was productive

A large alluvial fan; braided streams supplied water; alluvial soils supported agriculture; reed marshes and seasonal swamps added resources. It succeeded by using a diverse landscape, not just dry-field farming.

Çatalhöyük as a "super-community"

May have formed when several earlier communities came together at a new location. Houses packed tightly; possibly nearly 10,000 people, far larger than a typical Neolithic village.

Çatalhöyük's settlement layout

Houses built together like rectangular boxes, walls touching neighbors; almost no streets at ground level; flat roofs served as routes; people entered through roof openings using ladders

Inside a Çatalhöyük house

A large main room, a smaller storage room, plastered walls and floors, low platforms around a central area. Repeatedly coated with white mud plaster made from marl from the old Pleistocene lakebed; floors often painted red.

Everyday life and sacred space at Çatalhöyük

A cleaner area held elaborate wall decorations, plastered platforms, and burials beneath floors. Homes combined domestic work, ritual, remembrance, and burial.

Çatalhöyük art and symbolism

Wall paintings of geometric patterns, human figures, a huge wild bull, and headless human figures surrounded by vultures. Bull heads made from real cattle skulls and horns covered in plaster. Sculptures of goats, leopard-like felines, and female forms.

Çatalhöyük farming and herding

Economy relied on semi-domesticated cereals and legumes and large flocks of sheep. The area flooded seasonally, so fields and pastures were probably several km away; food production depended on the wider landscape.

Çatalhöyük long-distance resources

Obsidian from volcanic sources in Cappadocia (~125 km / 78 mi away); pine and juniper timber from mountains to the south and west; venison from forested mountains; crops and sheep from fields beyond the settlement

What Çatalhöyük reveals

Early communities could be very large and dense, with complex architecture, art, ritual, and burial. Daily life, religious symbolism, and ancestor remembrance were connected. It relied on farming and herding plus distant forests, mountains, and trade, challenging the idea that complex society began with Mesopotamian cities.