Anthropology - Origins of State

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Beginnings of Anthropology

8/28/2024

Civilization is a term from 17 cent

• Used to describe large scale complex society

Problem Connected to idea of progress

Word society viewed w/ superiority, or racial connotations

Drawbacks of large scale society - produce lots of waste

DEF - State: Urban societies, they have cities, have urban societies

Characteristics of States

• Political organizations (govs)

• Urbanism (cities)

• Social stratification (classes)

• Economic and role specialization (a job to rule, soldier, farmer, crafter, ect)

• Intensive agricultural systems

• Production of surplus for state projects (taxes and tribute)

• Periods of dev and collapse

Cradle of humanity - Africa (south and east) - Great Rift Valley East Africa (high erosion)

Geological Epochs

Pleistocene Epoch (Ice age) 2,000,000 ybp - 10,000BC

Holocene Epoch 10,00 BC-present

Hominids: Human Ancestors - Evolution through Pleistocene

Larger brains, 

earliest stone tools by 2.6 mya, 

More sophisticated tools and techniques (fire, shelter, burial of the dead)

Homo sapiens sapiens evolve in Africa by ca. 100 kya

Homo erectus -> Homo sapiens = cranial capacity increased

Summary of Upper Paleolithic Society

• Small family based foraging groups (bands)

• Mobile

• Egalitarian - no set leader

• Little economic specialization (age & gender)

• Small-scale, portable technologies

9/4/2024

Greeks believe time was cyclical
Christians believed it was a continuous line, predetermined course (determined by god)

Modern Theories about the rise of States

• Time fo the French Rev

• Time of American Rev

• British Civil war

  • Ppl were fed up of autocracy

Modern thinkers began questioning how gov came to be and if they are good or not

Came up with 2 theories

Integration Theories: How does the state gov tie people together? - gov acts as CEO

How gov integrates society:

• Roads

• Money

• Social security

• Large cities

• Public Education

Conflict Theories: how gov deals with internal conflict

• Argument is the state gov immerges to deal with that conflict

the state resolves Class conflict (in favor of the powerful)

• Marxism

• Police repression

• Minimum wage

Enlightenment 17-18th Century

Enlightenment Philosophers

Thomase Hobbes

Jean-Jaques Rousseau

Enlightenment Philosophers

• causality: grounded in voluntaristic actions

• benefited from the Age of Discovery

• Non-Western Societies seen as “fossil” stages in social evolution

Integrationist Views (Hobbes)

• uncivilized societies

  • existing chaotic "in a state of nature"

  • life as a constant struggle

• Civilization develops out of state of nature

  • people gave up their natural rights

  • transfer collective will to a sovereign

  • accept laws to gain benefits of an orderly society

  • the social contract

 Conflict Views (Rousseau)

• government develops to suppress class conflict

• favors rich & powerful

Problems with Pre-Nineteenth Century Approaches

• No data: prior to the discipline of archaeology

• Ethnocentric

Nineteenth Century Cultural Evolutionism

Cultural evolutionists: Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, Friedrich Engels & Karl Marx

Revolutionary ideas: Darwinism - evolution

Beginning of systematic study of people throughout the earth

Biggest interest is: cultural evolution (they were problematic)

Evolution from primitive to advance (still viewing as past societies as primitive)

Evolution of progress

Change of small scale to more complex

 Comparison to Enlightenment Thinkers

• Like them viewed change as progressive and Non Western societies as arrested in development

• Critiqued idea of voluntarism

• Focused on causal mechanisms

• Benefited by early archaeology and ethnography

Herbert Spencer (integration theory)

• Society as a System

  • Different parts (religion, politics, military economic) all working together for the good of the society as a whole

• Survival of the Fittest (societies, not individuals)

  • Society is what drives cultural evolution

• Societies evolve towards greater complexities of social structures

• As governments become more powerful they are able to 

  • handle more moving parts and 

  • integrate them better so the society flows smoother

  • Evolve to greater technological complexity

• Warfare and the Rise of the State

  • Conflict with other societies cause people to unite

  • Submit to a centralized gov

    • Can centeraliz community

    • Centralized authority becomes ruling class

      • Leads to greater inequality

Lewis Henry Morgan

• Came up with a “better” terminology to describe sequence of cultural evolution

• Evolutionary Stages 

  • Savagery (lower, middle, upper)

    • Middle Savagery marked by use of fire

    • Upper marked by use of bow and arrow

  • Barbarism (lower, middle, upper)

    • Middle pottery

  • Civilization

• Very ethnocentric

• Believed societies at any one stage are very similar to other societies at the same stage

• Also helped influence Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx & Engles

Marxist Theory of Social evolution

• Based on ideas of class conflict

• Driving social change

Main point: views on materialism

• Social change involves the material conditions of existence 

  • Food

  • shelter

  • Raw materials for tech

• All controlled by someone

How material conditions of existence are organized -> explains cultural change

9/9/2024

• Human history is explained by : How material conditions of existence are organized

  •  How they acquire the materials they need

  • The groups they organize into 

  • Who controls production

    • Factories 

    • Fields

• Theory: as society become larger and more complex (and as there incears in social inequality) there is more internal conflict and tension between ppl

  • Wealthy and poor

  • Cities and countryside

  • Or Class conflict - most important to Marx

• This lead to the emergence of State Gov, to deal with class conflict

  • B/c gov populated by wealthy/powerful they put down the lower classes

  • Upper classes monopolized and controlled the means of production

• Marx and Engles believed in linear progression of evolution

  • Viewed/classes civilization in stages

• Believed Mogan: any society at any stage same as other society @ same stage

  • Takes away cultural diversity

  • Degrading those society

  • This viewpoint was viewed/based on the archeology they had then (not a lot)

  • Biased viewpoints

• Scholars believed in a universal theory of evolution

Recitations

9/6/2024

How can we know anything about Hunter-Gatherers?

Cultural Anthropology

• Work with modern H-G society

• Rock art

• Archaeology

• Zoo archeology - figuring what animals were there at the time (hunted to extinction)

• Paleobotany - expose dirt to water and get pollens that have survived large over time

Behavioral Ecology

• Human Biology

  • Gut microbiome

  • Anatomy: Small teeth and small gut (need to eat foods in high nutrient)

  • dental hygiene

  • Dental structure changes

  • Oral microbio

  • Dental calculus - large buildup of plaque on teeth (plaque hardens and preserves what the person was eating, diseases they had)

9/9/2024

Twentieth Century Approaches

• Reject cultural evolution (universal evolution rejected)

  • Middle part of 20th Century

  • Reintroduce cultural evolution

  • Some similarities and differences

  • End of 20th Cent

  • View dev of complex society

  • From the perspective of comparative anthropological science

  • Perspective: 

    • move away from primitive to advance

    • Now it’s complex to more complex

    • Also Looking at cultural diversity

    • More evidence

Twentieth Century Cultural Evolutionism vs 19th Century

• Anthropology as a comparative (w/ enough evidence) & generalizing (but not prematurely) science

• develop universal theories (like 19th Century approaches)

• build theories to explain these patterns

• Societies change and adapt not evolve

• less overtly ethnocentric than 19th Century 

Mult-ilinear cultural evolution explains of cultural diversity General/Unilinear cult evolution addresses change from less to more complex societies 

THE BOASIAN CRITIQUE OF THE 19th  CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS

 (Cultural/Historical Particularism)

 1900-1930

Critique of cultural evolution - against Lewis Henry Morgan and Spencer

Franz Boas - studied native american ppl

• Ideas about cultural evolution - problematic

  • If anthropologist view modern western society as best they are biased (ethnocentric and racist)

  • Describing culture in a handful of terms you are missing important details

  • Generalizing the world

  • Anthropology is a young system

    • Too premature to come up with grand theories of history

  • Argued we should do cultural particularism

    • Don’t make grand assume 

    • Every culture changes b/c of its own particular circumstances

    • Own unique history

  • Collect more info before trying to find similarities between all the cultures

Neo-Evolutionism (New cultural evolution theories) of the 20th Century 

1930s-1960s 

• Cultural evo ideas reintroduced

V. Gordon Childe 

• 1st scholar to bring cultural evolution ideas back

• Inspired by Marx

• Argued that to explain cultural evolution need to look at relationship between tech and environment (marxist materialist)

• Can Identify 3 great periods of great revolutionary change (2 will be focused on)

• Changed the way people lived

  • Neolithic revolution

    • Farming and agriculture

      • Larger populations

  • Urban revolution (he focus more on this)

    • Ppl moved to cities

    • Dense urban conglomerations

  • Industrial rev (not focused on)

Childe focused more on Urban Revolution

Theory: Origins of the state

• State societies dev in arid regions of the world

• Ppl developed irrigation agriculture

  • As pop grew ppl had to generate more resources

  • Ppl did this by dev irrigation tech

  • As population grew irrigation tech expanded

• Large scale irrigation

  • Req organization of labor

• Leads to the development of Managerial elite

• Managerial elite demanded something from populus in return

  • Taxes, agricultural resources, trade goods….

• This leads to a division of labor -> class conflict

  • Wealthy

  • Farmers, workers 

• Deal w/ conflict -> state gov

Julian Steward - many contribution to archeology

• 1st thinker to look at human relationships w/ envi

• Interested in cultural diversity -? Dev theory of multilinear cultural evolution

  • Many things that go into cultural evolution

  • Focus on human adaptation to environment

  • how different societies adapted to envi -> created cultural diff

1960s-2000s 

Elman Service - reintroduced stages(like morgan but diff)

Kent Flannery 

Robert Carneiro 

Richard Blanton

9/11/2024

Elman Services

• reintroduced stages(like morgan but diff)

• Drew on Steward, how cultures adapted related to environment around them

• Cam up with 

Unilineal scheme

• As cultures become more complex they do in sequence

• Bands (!Kung, Inuit)

  • small scale hunting and gathering group

  • 100s

  • Egalitarian - few diff is status

  • Mobile

  • Loosely integrated

  • Autonomous (apart from dog)

  • No rulers

    • Task specific

  • Decisions are by consensus

  • Social status is achieve in lifetime

• Tribes (Plains Indians, Nuer)

  • 100-1000 pll

  • Rely on agriculture or pastoralism (raising cattle, depend on domesticated animals

  • Settlements not autonomous (linked)

    • Multi community

    • Integrated by kinship or religious beliefs/practices

  • Egalitarian

  • Influence gained by achievements in your lifetime

  • Ppl with influence do have an importance

  • Rulers - too strong a term for ppl w/ influence

  • Little role specialization

  • Economic built on reciprocity

• Chiefdoms (Kwakiutl, Hawaiians)

  • 1000s

  • Pretty complex

    • Significant inequality

    • Inequality ascribed during birth

      • Born wealthy or not

      • Noble or commoner

    • Status is hereditary

  • Tied by 

    • Kinship

    • Religion

    • And Ruler (chief- which could be fem or male dep on society)

      • Most powerful authority across social spectrum

        • Politics

        • Religion

        • Economy

        • Warfare

        • They have real coercive power

      • B/c of this they are wealthy

      • Diversity of economic roles

      • Craft specialization

        • pottery

        • Textiles

        • Religious

        • Curers

      • Still is reciprocity -> redistribution (in favor of ruler)

        • Taxing the ppl

        • Demand resources from ppl

          • Food

          • Craft goods

        • Source of wealth for rulers

        • Resources used to establish relations with other rulers

        • Back to the people: ritual feasting (religious) 

      • Power of the ruler is legitimized through the religion 

        • Special relationship w/ divinity

• Ex: Hawaiian Islanders, Ancient Panama, Kwakiutl (west coast of canada)

• States (Maya, Mesopotamia)

  • 1000s-billions

  • Have cities

  • Need intensive system of agricultural production

  • High integration - by government (not just 1 rulers - Service’s) complex administrative organization - this is a controversial part of his def

    • Bureaucracy w/ at least 3 tiered political administrators

    • Full time professional leaders

    • Resources are mobilized to create state projects (ancient civilizations: large scale irrigation, monumental buildings)

  • Divers in social and eco roles

    • Architects, scribes, carters, religious 

  • Inequality - institutionalized in from of classes

    • Social

    • Wealth

    • status

• Empires (Aztec, Inca) - Service doesn’t include

  • State that has conquered other people

Service argument - not a typology but how we should think about it

Robert Carneiro

Circumscription (enclosed/surrounded) Theory (goes from Integration theory to Conflict)

• Environmental Circumscription

  • Ppl live in area that has many resources

  • But surrounded by areas w/ poor amount of resources

    • Ex: islands, oasis in middle of desert, valley of a mountain range

• Social Circumscription

  • Surrounded by competitors

• As population grows strip resources -> lead to competition/ warfare

  • Environment too (would need multiple groups)

• Leader become more powerful as they win and gain more land

  • Drives inequality’

  • Increasing power of rulers

  • The process of conquering people requires administration

    • Intensifying agriculture (b/c if some ppl are fighting not everyone can work in fields)

    • Ppl that are conquers become lower classes (this is when it turns to Conflict Theory)

Kent Flannery

Need to come up w/ multi factor theory (ecological system)

• not everything will apply to every state

• Societies should be viewed as systems

  • Integrated system

  • They have different parts

    • Trade

    • Military

    • Religious

    • Political

  • The parts work together to maintain equilibrium between society and environment

  • disequilibrium(b/c of pop growth or drought) : degradation of environment, societal collapse, ect

  • The Society needs to stay below the carrying capacity

  • The society needs to respond to any cultural change (pop change, drought)

    • Redistribute along land

    • Go to war

    • Dev new tech to grow new crops

  • Important component is information

    • Ideas ( religious?)

  • Information monitor balance between pop and ressources

    • If out of balance -> initiate response

• Flanery first ppl to acknowledge, culture and society not always about becoming more advance sometimes they were unsuccessful (devolution)

  • Need to have triggers or envi stressors that lead back to equilibrium

  • These trigger responses need to include 

    • increase in scale 

    • increase integration 

    • More powerful rulers

Ppl questioning 29th cent ideology:

• Can’t define by simple stages

  • History/culture is too complex

• Idea that society are systems

• Haven't talked about: people (other than rulers)

  • Need to consider

    • Strategies

    • Identity

    • Behavior of people in society

    • Views

    • Interests

  • Not functioning wholes

    • They have internal conflicts(not just class conflict) and differences

    • All these conflicts have effect on ancient society

9/16/2024

B/c of critics about State ideology

• Society typology is not diverse - compresses diversity

• Criticisms about the scale theories are focused on 

  • Don’t talk about people talk about societies, chiefdoms, but not the common ppl

Richard Blanton Questions societal Typologies

• Looked at society as continuum

• Endpoints go from Network to Corporate (lots or room in between)

Network State

• Society where rulership is unconstrained

  • Source of power (resources) external to society

    • Ppl don’t have lots of say

  • Competition from other rulers

    • Warfare more sig

    • Competitive feasting

    • Ritual performances

  • Don’t require significant amount of taxation

  • Resources from other societies 

  • Important for rulers must have good relations w/ other rulers

    • Through trade

    • marriage

Corporate State

• Important resources comes from ppl

  • Ancient State: labor

  • Today: Taxes

• Rulers need to make sure that ppl consent to being ruled

  • Ppl have some leverage

• Ppl can’t be alienated

• Often see ideology reflect corporate patterns

  • Reflect the importance of common ppl

  • Usually religious

  • See these in the interest of large scale projects

    • Construction of ceremonial centers

• Through religion ppl are brought together

Blanton says most societies are a mix of both

But ppl use model as typology going against what Blanton is saying

Archaeological Theory in the Late 20th & 21st Center:

Post-processual archaeology

Said no to 

• Typological theory bad

• Describing human society as functioning systems

• Arguing that causation is external to society

  • Changes of resources in envi

  • Warfare

  • External conflict

Think more about 

• Ppl

  • Gender, identity

• How society is socially divers (especially in large scale society)

  • How that leads to conflict

  • Diff in where ppl live (city, country side)

  • Diff world view 

  • Ppl w/ diff occupations

Look at ppls identity and what they do - how that creates social institutions

Recognize ppl are not free agents

• Actions are constrained BY:

  • social institutions

  • Distribution of resources

  • Cultural ideas

Look at the strategies of rulers

• What sets them apart from their subjects

  • They were chose

  • Their inheritance

  • Their connections w/ the gods

    • They can communicate with them

• Need to justify why they are rulers

  • Economical skill

  • Political relations

B/c ppl have a way of sing through certain ideology

• Ppl are critical of their rulers

• Ppl can refuse to consent → leads to destruction of rulers

How do we talk about social complexity?

• Look at Measures of social complexity

  • Scale

    • Measure of pop

  • Integration

    • Integration of community

    • Integration of culture

      • Trade

      • Language

      • Economic diversity

      • Religion

      • Government

  • Heterarchy

    • Social difference

    • Distinctions of identity

  • Hierarchy (inequality)

    • Class

    • Wealth

    • Power

    • Status

Course Themes in Explaining the Emergence of Social Complexity

Centripetal vs centrifugal 

Conflict vs integration

Material conditions vs ideology

9/18/2024

Finding Evidence of State Societies

Archeological Evidence

• Remains of Structure/Architecture

• Could be microscopic - pollen

  • Plants that were growing near an archaeological site

  • Tells u abt what plants ppl ate

• Bones

  • Of animals that they were eating

  • Or domesticated

    • (extinct bison)

  • Use bones for tools (bones can be from extinct animals)

• Tools

  • Projectile tools

• Pottery (ceramics)

  • Most common archaeological finds

  • Pieces of pottery - pot shards

  • Rarely elaborate artifacts

    • In royal cemeteries

• Architecture

  • Hard to miss - pyramids of Giza

  • Some more subtle

    • Trenches for walls

    • Stains in sediment where wooden walls or posts rotted

Human remains - skeleton

• Tell us diet

• Age

• Religious practices

• How they died

• Male/female (for adults only)

Mummifications

• Natural

  • Wet conditions (bog people of western Europe)

    • People are sacrificed

  • Dry conditions

    • Sacrifice in the high mountains

• Artificial

  • Egypt

• You get stomach remains

• Tell more about about how they died

• Some DNA can be recovered

With human remains we can also tell cultural practices

• Deformed skulls - longer than normal and trephinations

  • Sign of status

  • Set apart from common people

How do we find Archeological Sites?

Archeological Survey - discover, recording, collection, and analysis of archaeological evidence from the surface

Excavation - discover, recording, collection, and analysis from beneath the surface

• During excavation you need to understand the spatial relationship between the pottery or the artifacts that you are digging up

• Understanding the 3 dimensional relationship between everything

• Screen through sediment

• Look at the sediment

  • Has pollen

  • And tells us about construction process

• Cedar

  • Radiocarbon dating

  • Dating organic materials

Archeological Evidence for States

Gradual increase in everything

• Urbanism

  • Small towns → villages → cities

  • Evidence

    • Large population

    • Zonation

      • Residencial

      • Economic (workshops/markets)

      • Political

      • Ritual areas

• Social Stratification

  • Difference in achieved status → heredity inequality → class based society

  • Evidence

    • Ceremonialism 

    • What are ppl being buried with

      • Fancier- lots of thing - high more elite person died

      • Smaller amount of things - person was not very wealthy

    • House size

      • Palace

      • Or farmers hut

    • Diet

    • Wealth objects

• Economic Specialization 

  • Specializations of economic roles (to a smaller extent) → more specialization

  • Evidence

    • Craft specialization

      • Who is making the potter → the person with the tools/resources

      • Missfired pots near workshop

      • Firing apparatus (kiln)

    • Evidence of markets

• Material Surpluses (taxes)

  • Less degree w/ less complex societies

  • Evidence

    • Storehouses

    • If labor - we find monumental buildings

    • Writing - stamps that said who was owner - tells us about circulation of goods

• State form of Political Organization

Some indicators of political organization:

• Strong central gov (most early civ didn’t have bureaucracy)

• System of taxation/tribute

• Ability to raise army

• There are rulers in smaller state societies

• Evidence - model of what idealized state bureaucracy looks like

  • Service - 3 tiered Administrative Hierarchy

    • poly capital:Political center for entire state

    • Regional capital: Political center for each region

    • Local capita: Political centers for local district

  • This takes lots of time to prove if archeological site is a political center

    • Assumed - poly capital needs to be largest- usually a city

    • Regional capital is smaller

    • Local capital is smallest

But this takes a lot of time. And resources to find archaeological evidence 

Shorthand - 4-tiered Settlement hierarchy

• 1^st order: polity capital 

• 2nd order: regional capital

• 3rd order: local capital

• 4th order: non-administrative communities

It is easier to survey and calculate how large a site is 

• This is how they decide what tiered settlement it is a part of.

• No much on administrative hierarchy (b/c of time)

Other

• Monumental buildings housing political intuitions 

  • Housed ruling institutions

  • Religion and politics intertwined - churches had political sig

• Symbols of rulership

  • Scepters

  • Sarcophagus

  • crowns

• Written dynastic histories

  • The ppl that could read and write were elites

    • Wrote about themselves

    • Tells us about the rulers

    • Economic of state

      • Taxes

      • Trade

      • Tribute

      • Rulers families

      • History of ruler dynasty

Recitation

cULTURAL Evolution to Steward

• connected by ideas of biological evolution

• Thought Victorian Era Cultural Evolution failed bc

  • Progress was the guiding principle

  • Indo on what the embraced their assumptions was wrong

  • The failed to account for cultural diffusion

    • Some ideas from another culture a society is in close contact w/ will mix

  • It was unilinear

• Neoevolutionism

  • Still look for general patters but recognizes that it is multilinear

  • Based on ecology and environment

  • Among the several path available to cultural evolution

  • Are irrigation leads to state

Why Cultural Evolution failed According to Flannery (1972)

• Says nothing about failure due to racist and sexist assumptions

• Still relied on types of societies w. Lists of characteristics

• Acknowledges the importance of ecology/envi

• Critiques hypothesized causes of state formation as correlated but not causal

• Ultimately, past cultural evo theories were inconsistent w. The archeo records bc they failed to consider ritual and belief/ideology

Why Cultural Evolution failed According to Johnson (2020)

• No reason why cultural evo is simple to complex

• Complex societies are not necessarily better adapted to their envi

• Cultural change can be sudden or gradual

• There is no reason to assume that cultural evolution leads to more moral, just, or civilized society

• Cultural evo has been overly general and simplistic: failed to account for historical particularism, contingency or historical accident; ten to ignore diffusion cultural contract; ignores individual agency - one person took charge to change somth, change doesn’t always happen b.c everyone wants it to

Blanton and Kurick articles

9/23/2024

Post Glacial Environment Change and Human Adaptation 

• Look at how the people respond to the envi changes (end of pleistocene start of Holocene)

Upper paleolithic

• Ppl lived in small family groups (hunter-gatherer)

• Mobile

• By the end they domesticated the dog

• Environment - Large Arctic and subarctic regions compared to today

  • Less edible plants

  • Hunted now extinct pleistocene megafauna - 

    • Mammoths

    • Mastodons

    • Giant ground sloth

    • Pleistocene bison

Pleistocene characteristics

• Large glacial envi

• Expansion of polar ice caps

• Sig less liquid water

  • Sea level was sig lower then not (400 feet lower)

Terminal Pleistocene/Holocene

• Paleotemperature Curve (warming curve)

  • Continental glaciers migrate back 

  • Land is exposed

  • Megafauna go extinct

  • Increase in seasonality - seasonal allergies are more prevalent

• Sea levels rises

  • Floods

  • Creation of estuarine environments

    • Shells etc

  • Expansion of small and medium bodied animals

  • Expansion of demestical grases

Reorientation of what people sustain on

Idea of domestication begins

Increase in population

Diversification in resources people are exploiting - generalized subsistence

• Smaller kinds of animals would reproduce faster

Ppl in coastal area living in larger groups (200-300 ppl)

• Still mobile

  • Move seasonally

Technological changes

• Smaller spear points

• Smaller stony tools - Microliths

• Tools to exploit coast resources

  • Hooks

  • Fishing spears

9/25/2024

Agricultural Revolution in Southwest Asia

Neolithic period - 10,000-6000 BC

Establishing economic base for complex state societies

• First sedentary villages (people living in place year round)

• First evidence of social inequality (achieved status diff)

• Tech change

  • Chip stone tools less sig (taking one stone and chipping other stone)

  • Ground stone tool more important (using grinding stone)

    • Grinding stones also used on grains 

    • Leads to domestication of plants

• 1st pottery

  • Ceramic vessels to store things and cook in

All this was found in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan

Domestication

What is it: plant or animal that is depended on ppl for survival

• Symbiotic relationship

Human intervention that lead to domestication

Propagation

Artificial selection

• Ppl selectively breeding, enhancing properties that people want to enhance

  • Plants - larger edible portions

Cultivation/husbandry

Caring for plant or animal

• Helping survival/reproduction

Plants

• Wedding fields

• Watering them/fertilizing

• Pest control

Animals

• Caring for them

• Feeding them

• Protecting them

Harvesting

Storage

Store seeds for next planting season

This leads to physical changes in plants → this indicates archaeological domestication

Teosinte to Maize

Animals

More fat

In sheep - horns change

Period leading to development of Sedentary Agricultural Villages

Overview

Early Neolithic Period (10,000-8000 BC)

Ppl focus more on wild version of plant/animals that will be domesticated

• Exploiting more frequently

• Some tools dev to help

• But not outright domesticating

Main regions: Levant - Natufian Culture

Archeological sites: Jericho and Ain Mallaha

• Rich coastal region

Karim Shahir - Zargos Mountains

Known as Fertile Crescent

• Region where pre-domesticated sheep reside 

Transitional Village Period (8500-7000 BC)

First physical evidence of domestication

Ceramics

Fully Neolithic Villages (7000-6000 BC)

Fully domestic economy

• Rely of most of their food

The transition from Mesolithic Period to the Early Neolithic Period

Tools change

Grinding stones are more common

Sikles 

Oval Houses of the Natufian period

Storage barrels inside

Social inequality

Looking at burials 

Most had nothing in them

Some had items in it → Achieved status (merit based)

Transitional Village Period Development

Ppls diets are mostly made up of wild resources

• Domestic is a small part of the diet

  • Wheat, sheep and goats but wild

• Ceramics - Ganj Dareh, Iran

See sites outside fertile Crescent

• They are in places where, wheat, barley, and sheep don’t occur - 

• Ali Kosh Western Iran 1.7 hectare around 30 mudbrick houses

  • Evidence that people transported these resources

  • Needed to care for them b/c otherwise they wouldn’t survive in those areas

Fully Neolithic Village Periods

Ppl are depending on domesticates for nutrition 

Pottery is important in all sites

Villages are larger

Emergence of long distance trade

Site: Jarmo, Iraq

• Ppl relied on domesticated sheeps, goats, cattle

• Long distance trade

  • Many tools made from obsidian

  • Each source of obsidian has its own chemical signature

    • Can analyze obsidian from archaeological sites and tell where tools came from

  • Tools came from eastern Turkey

    • Possibility of trade between two groups

Major Theories to Explain Domestication

1. Childe’s Oasis Theory

Animals and people concentrated around area of permanent water and resources

Ppl exploited these resources and got familiar with them and began using them in different ways which led to domestication.

At end of ice age - you had a doubt

• Based on little evidence

B/c of extreme climate ppl congregated in sources of permanent water

• Springs

• Permanent rivers

b/c of this ppl are familiar with these animals b/c the are in the same place

2. Braindwood’s “Nuclear Zone” Theory

1940 - Jarmo - Robert Braidwood

Looking for earliest signs of domestication

Idea was: wild ancestors of early domesticates were most abundant in fertile crescent

• In these areas b/c resources were so abundant ppl would focus on exploitation → recognize productivity and improve on using them in efficient ways

• As communities were larger and sedentary they would use resources more

• Experiment with artificial selections → traits more favorable 

Problems with his theory: doesn’t explain why domestication dev when it dev

• Why did it only occur 10K years ago

• Jarmo is actually not one of the earliest signs of domestication

• Earliest sites are outside of the fertile crescent

Disproving Childe’s theory

1. Little data

2. Sites w. Early domesticates not found in oasis settings

3. There was no drought

3. Binford’s Demographic Stress Model

Lewis Binford 

Some theories used human pop to explain cultural change

• human innovation occurs because population increases

Argues: During paleolithic (hunting and gathering group)

They had mechanisms to keep pop low

If in mobile pop → difficult to care for more than 1 infant

• Some ways that they might have enforced it/spaced births

  • Taboo, can’t have sex for an amount of time after giving birth

  • Not weaning children until several years old (suppresses fertility)

And when holocene began → flooding

• Increase estuaries

  • Most productive habitats in the world

Under these rich environmental conditions ppl didn’t worry as much about food.

• Ppl became sedentary - eliminate population control mechanics

• Increase in pop b/c spaced births no longer necessary

• As pop grew new technologies to exploit wild foods

  • Once carrying capacity was reached 

• Population Pressure responses:

  • Move away from coastal envi to places w/ less ppl

    • More arid, drier and hotter

  • and transport the wild resources with them

    • Need to care for plants and animals otherwise they would die w/o care

Advantage of model

Explains why earliest envi of domestication is outside Fertile Crescent

Explains why marginal and optimum zone have similar technology

Disadvantages:

No evidence of population pressure

Jericho

Excavated Neolithic

Kathleen Kenyon - excavated it completely

Site was first settled during natufian period

Large semi subterranean oval stone structures

Pre-pottery period

Timeline

Mesolithic (12000 bc) ppl shift to Holocene resources (ancestors of domesticated)

Early Neolithic - people developing technologies to focus on these wild ancestors of early domesticates

Transitional village period (8500 BC) - first evidence of actual domestication

7000 BC ppl depending on domesticated resources for the majority if their food, 

Late Neolithic People living in small agricultural villages

1 hectare pop about 300 ppl 

Unusual Neolithic Sites

Jericho

Overview

8400 BC (beginning to transitional village period)

• 4 hectares 

• Pop of 1000 ppl

Location

• Levant - modern Jordan

• Rich coastal region

• in natufian period was normal

• Transitional village period it grew

Discovery

• Excavated by Kathleen Kenyon

  • Identified 2 different periods

  • Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)

• 8400-7200 BC (Jericho is abandoned around 7200)

• Jericho grows from 1-4ha

• And population increases from couple 100 to 1000

• Consisted of circular houses

• Surrounded by large wall (prob defenses, or flood protection)

  • 3 meters in width, 4 meters high

  • There was a tower and a ditch

• Evidence of long distance trade (obsidian from turkey)

  • Trading for salt possibly? (unsure what they traded)

• Not clear why it was abandoned

  • Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)

• 6800-6000 BC

• Cultural changes

  • Architecture more elaborate (larger+courtyards)

  • Some houses have workshops (start of craft specialization but not full time)

  • First building devoted to ritual (religion)

    • 10 human skulls covered in plaster

    • Ancestor venerations

TRADE

During this time we see an increase in long distance trade (obsidian, jadeite, copper, shell)

• Exported: salt, bitumen, crops? Idea of what they were exporting

Catal Huyuk

Overview

8000-6500 BC

• 10 hectares

• 5000-6000 ppl

• Made up of densely packed multi-room houses of mud-brick and wood

  • Houses are continuous and build on the same walls

  • No roads

  • Doors/activity on roof

• Ppl domesticated, wheat and peas, cattle

• Formalized religion

• Every House have 

  • House shrines

    • w/ sculpture of bulls head

  • Walls plastered

    • Many painted scenes of hunters or wild animals

    • Hunting scenes

    • Sometimes even volcanoes

  • Molded reliefs

    • Bulls

    • Leopards

    • People

• Ppl were buried under houses

  • Most had nothing inside the burials

  • Except for burials under shrines (only adults - so achieved status)

    • Elaborate Knives

    • Polished stone mace heads

    • Copper beads

• Economic specialization

  • Making of obsidian tools (major export for Catal Huyuk)

  • Imported copper, timber, marine shell, turquoise

  • Not full specialization

Location

• Anatolian Plateau, eastern Turkey

Discovery

• James Mellaart and Ian Hodder

• 5000-6000 ppl

Explanation on why these communities were so large

Economic trade centers 

• Both were trade centers

• Access to non-local resources for others

Jerico

Import: obsidian, jadeite, copper, shell

Export: Crops, Salt, bitumen

Catal Huyuk:

Import: copper, timber, marine shell, turquoise

Export: obsidian tools 

Religion

• Both have more formalized religious practices

Population is increasing

Living in a community with non-family based

Trade you are dealing with strangers

• Small increase in social inequalities

Conflict (inter group)

Agriculture: you are relying on a narrow amount of resources 

• Sometimes there are droughts

Large insecurity b/c of all these differences

Religion helps with insecurities - religion is a way of bringing people together or drawing ppl.

Origins of Social Complexity in Mesopotamian Lowlands

Earliest cities and states originated in Mesopotamia

, but at the end of the Neolithic not many ppl were living there.

Movement of people into Mesopotamia - 6500 BC

• Ppl move out of Fertile Crescent and eastern turkey

• Into mesopotamian lowlands : arid and hotter

Neolithic people were living in:

• Northern Anatolian Hills (Catal Huyuk)

• Zagros Mountains (Jarmo, Ganj Dareh, Karim Shahir)

• Levant Coast (Jericho)

Now: Mesopotamia 

• Vast flat naserian plain

• Near 2 large rivers (Tigris and Euphrates)

• 6500 BC - few ppl living there

  • First cities would emergy thousand of years later

  • Outside of wild animals range

• Ppl had to develop drought resistant strains for crops

Advantages of Mesopotamia

• Growing season is longer

• Broad floodplains for rivers and soil was replenished with sediment they carried

Ppl had to dev Irrigation agriculture/technologies

Settlement shift starts 6500 BC

• Irrigation agriculture starts

• Emergence of social complexity

Evidence used to distinguish complex society (or Chiefdoms - Services)

Archaeology of Chiefdoms

1. Centralized political authority

   1. Reinforced through religious beliefs and practices and Kinship

      1. Ruler and extended families have authority

      2. Ppl are born into ruler

   2. Ruler for economics, religion, military

2. Heredity social ranking (ascribed status)

   1. See through burials (kids buried w/ valuables)

   2. Houses

3. Networks of politically linked settlements

   1. 1-tiered or 2 tiered settlement hierarchy - small scale

      1. 1-tired : 1 ruler for polity and that community is sig larger than others

      2. And then settlements w/ out rulers

   2. 2-tiered or 3 tiered settlement hierarchy - Compex

      1. 2 tiered: Paramount ruler and local rulers

      2. And then settlements w/ out rulers (smaller) 

   3. Rulers towns expect to be larger, have more religious buildings, more trade

4. Redistribution

   1. Political economic relations have to do w/ redistribution

      1. Taxation

      2. Labor

      3. Crops

      4. Crafts

   2. This is the wealth of elite families

   3. Rulers use this to have good relations w/ other rulers

   4. Give back to the community - ritual feasting

Early Settlements of Northern Mesopotamia

Umm Dabaghiyah (6500-6000 BC)

Hassuna (6000-5399 BC)

Halaf (5500-4700 MC)

What are we seeing in these settlements

• Small villages of 1 ha and 100-300 ppl

• Tell sites(main building materials of mud and brick)

  • Houses would collapse and ppl would build over

  • Creating artificial mounds

• Concentrated close to Tigris

• Achieved status difference

  • Ritual buildings called Tholos

    • Keyhole shaped building 

    • Several times larger than houses

    • There are burials under the Tholos - but not the houses

      • Only burials are adults

    • No settlement hierarchy

  • More of the tribe classification from Services 

Samarran Culture (5500-4500 BC)

• Ppl move into central Mesopotamia (climate from upper to lower becomes more diff)

  • This is why later settlements will be found in lower region

Most known site: Tell es-Sawwan

• located in Tigris drainage - Central Mesopotamia

• 2-3 Ha Larger than upper mesopotamia

• Wall and ditch complex - evidence for inter community violence

• First evidence for irrigation

  • Some Canals can still be seen today

  • Irrigation allows ppl to live in harsher conditions

  • Ppl can grow non-drought resistant crops → more productive feed more ppl

  • Canals could be built w/ labor of a family or 2

• Long distance travel for prestige goods

• Changes in social organization

  • Some houses larger

  • Children and adults buried w/ elaborate offerings Hereditary status

    • Alabaster vessels

    • Alabaster figurines

  • T shaped temples → control of labor by leaders

  • 2-tiered settlement hierarchy: chiefdom (simple)

 Uruk: The world's First City

Irrigation was absolutely necessary to move into lower mesopotamia

• During summer and winter season it is very dry 

• Rainy season - too much water b/c of floods

Ubaid Period 5000-3500 BC

• Complex chiefdom with impressive sites like Eridu and Ur

  • Irrigation allow ppl to control water

• 3 settlement period

  • Agricultural villages

    • 6 Ha, several 100s of ppl

  • Local political center 

    • 50 ha, 1000s ppl

    • Evidence of 

      • sig status diff

      • Local rulers

      • Temple architecture

  • Regional centers Eridu and Ur

    • 50ha, 5000-6000 ppl

    • Clear status diff

      • Houses and burials

    • Diversification of craft specialization

      • More full time

    • Mass production of pottery

    • T shaped temples

      • Sacrificial altars

      • Elaborate burials - evidence for elite burials

      • Burials of rulers

      • One burial interred w/ many clay figurines, fancy poetry, prestige goods → prop a ruler 

    • Temple towns 

      • surrounded by walls and ditches → conflict between diff polities (chiefdoms)

      • This is where rulers would control labor

      • Led large scale religious ceremonies

    • Expansion of irrigation agriculture

    • Still small scale (indiv fam building for themselves)

    • But area being irrigated is much larger

      • Allows for year round agriculture production

      • Feeding larger pop

    • Verging on urbanism but not yet

Ubaid period Developments

• 3 tiered settlement hierarchy

• Regional chefly centers

• Sites like Eridu approaching Urban

• Chiefly burials

• Full-time craft specialization

Uruk Period 3500-3100 BC

[Though we are in mesopotamia the region is called a summarian state(s)]

Tremendous population growth is south Mesopotamia

Nucleation of settlements 

URUK

• 32ha 25000 ppl (5 times Ubaid period political centers)

• Population density is pretty packed

• 1st Step temples ziggurat

• 4 tiered settlement hierarchy

• Smaller centers (soon to be cities)

  • Eridu, Kish, Ur

• Further irrigation expansion

  • More area - prob still family based

  • Becoming to be more complex

Economic and political life

• Focused around Ziggurats

• Early Sumerian State: theocracy

  • Politics and religion and economics were one and the same

  • priest /rulers controlled the temples

  • Rulers powerful politically and religious figures

  • Nobles justified by religion

    • Had special ability to communicate w/ gods

Temples

• Highly decorated

  • Painted murals of rulers and deities

    • Sculpture of a Di-Utu

      • King of URUK

  • Store rooms: goods/taxes collected (materials)

• Scale of buildings show how summarian rulers used power

  • Ppl paid taxes through labor

• In temples murals explain power dynamic

  • Size of temple shows how much power ruler had of taxed labor

  • Ppl gave offerings to rulers (in murals taller figure = more power)

• Rulers did not live in temples lived in palaces near them

• Taxes and resources collected from taxes used for:

  • Trading expeditions

  • Mobilization of military forces

  • Redistributed back to populace - religious ceremonies (ritualistic feisting)

  • Labor: use for monumental structure - walls

    • Or temples

• URUK potter: mass production

  • Evidence for increase in social economic roles

  • Craft specialization

    • Potter, stone tools

    • Beveled rim bowls - standard serving vessel

• Trade

  • In Sumer states not a lot of resources other than agricultural

  • Rulers of URUK use crop surpluses to trade for 

    • raw materials for prestige goods

    • To make wealth items

    • Specialists would manufacture wealth items

• Literacy 

 first evidence was sumerian states and in egypt

• Known as “cuneiform” writing

• Inscribed on clay tables

• What was written: economics of state - taxes and trade

• Cylinder seals - roll out

  • Tamps

• To track ownership

• Make sure a sealed item was not tampered with

Overview of URUK

It was a state

It was a city 

• massive scale

• Different zones

  • Temples, markets, walls

• There is inequality

• Complex economic system

• Surplus production used for temple constructions (taxes/tribute)

• Powerful centralized rulership

  • 4 tiered settlement system

  • No bureaucracy

History of dev and decline of Sumerian Cities and States

Jemdet Nasr Period 3100-2900 BC

Pop growth (URUK around 50,000 ppl)

Extensive large scale irrigation

• Water control systems

  • Large canals and dikes and dams

• Rerouting streams

• Works were being funded by states

Need more intensive agriculture b/c craft specialization

Expansive trade

• Extend throughout south west asia into africa

• Acquired Prestige goods:

  • Precious stones like turquoise from Iranian plateau

  • Copper from Iranian Plateau and Sinai

  • Marble for sculpture and flint from Arabian Plateau

  • Timper from Zagros Mountains

• Evidence that rulers were funding trading expeditions

Interaction with other early states

• Early states and cities popping up

• Proto Illimite states, north of Sumer - now Iran

• Egypt

• Trade mainly but also conflict

True cuneiform writing

• Texts are longer

• Writing more formalized

• Written inscriptions during URUK period were short

Early Dynastic Period 2900-2371 BC

Major Sumerian City-States

Uruk

Ur

Kish

Lagash

Cities reached 400 ha and 50,000 ppl

Referred to as city-states bc most pop were concentrated in cities

Set in land where you could irrigate

Warfare expands

• Within city states

• And polities outside of sumer

  • Ilimites

  • Akkadian empire

• Cities were surrounded by massive walls

• Land buffers between polities

Each state went through a time of dominance

• Dominant player in lower mesopotamia

Dominant States in Sumer

Kish (2900-2750MC)

Uruk (2750-2700 BC) Ruled by King Gilgamesh - many epoch written about him

Elamites conquer summer 2700 BC

Ur and Lagash dominate over the next 200 years

Early dynastic cities were large 400ha

• Large in sense of population

• Centered around temple complexes

• Large palace complexes near temples

• High density of housing (continuous walls between houses)

Residential districts

Most elite are in ceremonial complex

Elite houses could be 2 stories

Commoner houses smaller, 50m on avg, 1 story

Cities laid out on groups - evidence that it was planned

Texts

There are histories about rulers and families

Epoch poems

Libraries of tablets (stored tablets)

Written in extinct languages

• No descendants of language

Writing was decided by comparing w/ another language that does have descendants and can compare meanings

• Can be read but don’t know what it sounded like

• Study of ancient writing epigraphy

Sumerian Noble

• Can identify 4 social classes

  • Nobility and rulers(at top), military leaders, noble merchants’

    • Evidence: Royal Cemetery from Sir Mortimer Wheeler

    • He also found ppl that were not nobles next to noble cemetery

      • Why: sacrifice

    • What was in tombs: marble and alabaster vesicles

      • Weapons

      • Gold objects (talas or dagger)

      • Musical instruments  

      • Royal chest

    • Famous tombs - Queen Puabi

      • Inner chamber, interesting: in outer chamber 59 ppl(evidence of blunt force trauma), carts, oxen

  • Skilled artisans - manufactured wealth items, employed by nobility

  • Most commoners, farmers, craft specialists didn’t make wealth items

  • Slaves captured in warfare

Factors at play in emergence of summerian states

• Irrigation → lots of planning and sophistication

• Environmental circumscription 

• Trade - for wealth and prestige items - control of trade

• Religion

Theories of rise of summerian states focus on material conditions of existence

• Irrigation

• (to less extent) trade

Main argument of rise of civilization (by childe, Binford, Braindwood’s : irrigation dev in lower mesopotamia b/c more arid

• Req many ppl increase in labor and labor organization

  • Potential conflict w. Irrigation

    • Some ppl live closer to irrigation

    • Some live far

    • If close and take too much water far have problem

• Leader needed to organize

  • Person that deals w/ disputes gains power over control of irrigation’

  • They becomes sumerian Elites

• Leader gains power and wealth

  • Start to manage trade 

• Organization probe leads to dev of bureaucracy

• Trade and warfare, coordinated by rulers and state bureaucracy

Problems with theories

Irrigation was also important in decline of sumerian states

• Mainly long term intensive irrigation

Sumerian states grew weaker b/c of conflict between themselves and others. 

• B.c of reliance on large scale irrigation

HIstory of Ancient agriculture

Started 5500 BC samarian period

3000 BC into period of sumarian states

• large scale irrigation 

  • Labor needed for clearing sediment and constructing rivers

Braided river: In Tigris and Euphrates they carry lots of sediment 

• Sediment builds up

• Channel of river builds up at greater rate than floodplain

• Needed only gravity to get water from river to irrigation canal

• Helps support pop growth

Risks:

• Ppl planting wheat and barley

  • Don't at end of winter (dry period before spring rains)

• Problems : Rivers varied 

  • Flow inconsistent and some flooding 

• Some years not enough water - sometimes too much

• Conflict - close and far

Major Risk: salinization

• Salt build up in agricultural fields

• Once plant absorbs salt it dies

• Where does salt come from?: fresh water always has salt (just less then salt)

Tigris and Euphrades has lots of salt in freshwater rivers

• Water is spread in the heat, water evaporates and salt stays

• Is a process that takes centuries

Through time the becomes a problem

• Ppl that have been farming Dev a sequence of ways to fix problem

No plants grow: desertification

Farmers pulled water back after the crops god what they needed - slows down salinization but doesn’t stop

Once salt levels are so high, water is kept on the plane for longer to bring the salt back into water.

• Water has low permeability in mesopotamia so salt does to the ground and eventually hits roots of plants

How to deal with Salinization in Mesopotamia

Rapidly drain off irrigation water

• Irrigate quickly and then take water away

• This only reduced the rate of salinization

• Over time there is still a buildup of salt

Leach soils jest before plowing to flush soil

• Salt buildup at the topsoil was at larger concentrations then on crops

• But this result in high concentrations of salt

• And the water table is going to move at a quicker rate

• When the top layer of water hits salt then the plants stop growing

Weed fallow with Shoq and Agul

• Helps with productivity

• These weeds use lots of water (deep root system)

• Helps lower water table

• Fixes soil (fertilize soil)

Grazing animals to fertilize soils

• Allow fertilization

• Raise agricultural productivity

• Doesn’t really do much about salinization

Remove saline topsoil

• Put it elsewhere

Abandon fields until salt levels decreases (50-100 years)

• Last resort

Irrigation led to both the rise of summerian states but also the decline because of salinization.

Evidence of salinizations:

Barely becomes focus of agriculture as shown in cuneiform records

Evidence of loss of soil fertility

Artificial environmental circumscription (Bruce Dickson draws on Robert Carnero)

• Acceleration of landscape degradation

• Less usable land but agricultural production is needed to support growing population

• Leads to conquest of sumerian states by Acadian Empire (by King Sargon in 2371 BC)

Rise of Social Complexity in Predynastic Egypt

Geography

Egypt is defined by the Nile River

Egypt is defined by upper Egypt (south) and lower Egypt (northern party) b/c Nile flows from south to north.

Lower Egypt is more temperate b/c it has the mediterranean weather to deal with 

Region south of Egypt Nubia - region Egypt was sometimes in conflict w/ and also traded with

Nile Floodplain

Could be thought of as an elongated oasis

Circumscribed by a rocky desert

Boundary is so distinct you can step from agricultural field to desert

Particularly true in upper egypt:

• Can only grow on a 3km strip arable strip

• Hot and fry

• Irrigation needed

• Nile rich in wild resources

Nile river was rich with animals

Lower Egypt

Broadens out into mediterranean sea

250x160km

Not as hot/dry more humid b/c of mediterranean climate

Less prone to drought

More crops can be grown

Ecological advantage over Upper Egypt

Most sites are deeply buried b/c of lots of deposition of sediment

Origins of the Egyptian State

Broad-based Adaptation 12000,5500 BC

Ppl were hunter gatherers

Small mobil groups

Neolithic Period 5500-3600 BC

Sedentary villages

• Villages of 10-30 houses

Achieved social ranking

• Similar to fully agricultural periods in southwest asia

Sudden appearance of domesticated barley, wheat, sheep, goats cattle

Small-scale irrigation by 4000 bc

Different than southwest asia - short progression in egypt

Why?

Trade with southwest asia

• Domesticated introduced from southwest asia

Gerzean Culture 3600-3200 BC

Chiefdoms up and down the Nile

Most powerful centered on 

• Naqada

• Hierakonpolis

Both upper Egypt and close to each other

Approaching 10000 ppl in population

Ascribed status difference

• Large cemetery and burials

Significant population growth

Evidence of fortification (walls and ditches)

Both political centers 2 settlement  hierarchy

Increasing long distance trade and interaction with sumerian states

• Precious stones from iranian plateau

• sumerian states

• Prestige goods

Cuneiform writing

• Emergence of writing emerged in sumer and egypt at the same time

• Medium presented was on papyrus paper (not clay tablets like sumer)

• Main topic was history of rulers and ruling families (not economics like sumer)

Politics in the Unification Period 3200-3000 BC

2 Powerful rulers of Hierakonpolis: Scorpion King vs Namer

Conquests leads to unification of egypt and state

Well documented in writing and later supported by archeology

Warfare between 2 polities 

2 kings

Scorpion King

Name comes from documents and in hieroglyphic writing

• Sources comes from elaborate mace head

• Wore white crown (traditional crown of egyptian rulers)

We know that the scorpion king conquered many polities

• Archaeologically we know that there was an increase in the size of Hierakonpolis

Transformed into a city

• See the construction of walls

• And monumental architecture (temples)

Narmer

Descendant of Scorpion king

Political strategist

Initiated an expansion in irrigation agriculture

• Allowed more resources to be produce (growth of population)

• Used for political control

  • Conquered areas were added to irrigation 

  • If they tried to rebel Nramer shut the water off

• Expanded conquest by concerning upper egypt and wen to lower egypt

• Put a capital on memphis (an area right between lower and upper egypt)

• Narmer Palette represents the unification of Egypt

  • Shows Narmer w/ white crown 

  • Shown as a reincarnation of hawk god Horus (in sumer culture rulers had relationship, Egyptian culture rulers were gods)

  • Other side of palette us Narmer wearing red crown (crown of lower egypt)

• Narmer has both crown meaning that unification has been reached

Unification would mark the beginning of the State of Egypt for thousands of years

• All the Pharaohs would wear a grown that would combine both the upper and lower crowns

Early Dynastic Period (3000-2650 BC)

All of Egypt is unified through conquest

Complex political systems and bureaucratic structure is dev

Expansion of irrigation up and down the nile

Large state that is narrow and long that were previously at conflict w/ each other

To deal with confit

• Egypt is divided into provinces - ruled  by provincial government

• Thousands of Scribes were employed to keep the records of state

• Thousands of craft specialist to keep relations with nobles

• Architects to construct monumental buildings, not only houses and palaces of rulers (institutions of state: gov buildings in provinces and temples throughout)

• Religious specialist: leaders of state religion

  • Overarching state religion - even though local areas had some special practices they were overlane w/ state religion.

Strategies of Integrating the Egyptian State

• Religious integration

  • Pharaohs are divine - could control flow of Nile

  • Disobey the Phartos is to rise doubt and disease

• Political capitals in Upper Egypt (Abydos) and Lower Egypt (Memphis) by Normar

  • Helps rule long narrow state

• Intermarriage of elites from north and south

  • Typing ppl together based on kinship

• Large Army mostly for defense against Nubians (south) and desert people (west)

  • United common ppl

Egyptian Capital Cities

Cities of 20,000-30,000

Palaces, tombs, temples, craft precincts, markets

Mastaba tomb

Above ground temple built w/ Mud bricks

There were shafts leading underneath to tombs

With a virtual necropolis (city of the dead)

These were early prototypes of the early pyramids

Old Kingdom Period (2650-2160 BC)

Pyramids of the old Kingdom

All built near Memphis

1. Zoser’s Pyramid (the Stepped Pyramid of Sakkara)

1st pyramid ever built, stepped pyramid w/ different levels (not smooth)

6 levels - 30 meters high

Inside narrow passageway going down to the tomb of Zoser

Built on top of a Mastaba

2. Pyramid at Meidum

Designed as a stepped pyramid but in the middle of building they made it into a smooth pyramid

Architects didn’t know how to build it properly and the materials collapsed - killing many workers

The Pharaohs were never put in them

3. Bent Pyramid

The pyramids were covered in plaster, the plaster is still visible on this pyramid

They initially built the pyramid at a 52 degree angle and then changed to a 43.5 degree angle b/c 1st one collapse and changed it

4. Red Pyramid at Dahshur

5. Pyramids at Giza: Khufu, Khafra, Menkaure

Pyramids after were significantly smaller

Khufu - largest pyramid ever built

Had plaster - would have been smooth pyramid

Required 100,000 laborers to work couple months every year for 20 years to build pyramid

Impressive monument to power of pharaoh

There were residents for the labors (so not slaves)

Pyramids were connected to ceremonial complex

Pyramids had chambers in them where kings and queens were buried

Many things were unknown about pyramids b/c they are difficult to investigate

Purpose of pyramids

Burial sites for queens and Pharaoh

Show off power of pharaohs and religious authorities

Mechanism of the rulers to ascend to heaven

Mendelssohn’s theory:

• Unified the populace

  • Building took place during flood season when no agri was taking place so ppl did have anything to do

• Bringing people together from everywhere in egypt: architects, labor organizers

• Dev bureaucratic organization of the state

  • After that bureaucracy was formed the size of pyramids declined 

    • b/c system was put to work on other projects (large scale irrigation systems)

Important factors of egyptian state

Connection of religion and politics  (pharaoh is god)

Irrigation agriculture 

Kinship amongst elite

Nile is highly circumscribed 

Conflict and warfare

Contact with early sumerian states ( trade) 

Explanation of Egyptian State formation

Problem is a materialistic/integration theory 

• Timing of beginnings of large-scale irrigation

• Doesn’t explain the pyramids

Ideology doesn’t simply justify equality 

• Religion is present before the emergence of the State

New kingdom period 1500 BC

• Sphinx

• Ramses

• King Tut

• Cleopatra

Enigma of Indus States

Largest civilization (1.3 million sq km) but lesser known

• Sea craft

• Surrounded by areas that are difficult 

  • North - himalayas 

  • East - great indian desert

  • West - arid mountains and foothills 

  • South - arabian sea

Neolithic roots

Site of : Mehrgarh

6500-2000 BC 200 ha

• Never fully occupied to 200ha

• Location of community shifted

• Mudbrick houses (well preserved)

• Achieved status differences

• Domesticated: wheat, goats, barley, cattle & later sheep

Pre-Harappan Culture:

Complex societies by 4000 BC w/ 2 -tiered settlement (hierarchies and fortified sites)

3200-2600 complex chiefdoms some sites over 8ha 2000-3000 ppl \

Indus Valley Cities (2600-1900)

Harappa
Mohenjo-daro
Kalibangan
Lothal

“Bronze Age civilizations”

4 tiered settlement hierarchy

Domesticated include wheat, barley, cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs

No evidence of large-scale irrigation (family level irrigation systems)

Traded over long distances - seafaring trade

City of Lothal was trading center (on edge of sea)

Mohenjo-daro most known 250ha and 40,000

• Well planned

• Everything oriented in same direction

• Had sewer system

  • But ppl still had parasitic infection

  • Had drains and wells

• Housing - rooms around a central courtyard

• Center (citadel like) 450x90 m 

  • On a elevated plane

  • Had a bath house

  • Prop for ceremonies

Social organization in Harappa

• Heterarchy: farmers, herders, metal workers, potters, weavers, architects, rulers etc. 

• Hierarchy: modest differences in residences, burials, wealth (terracotta figurines, copper, gold)

• Enigmatic: not like other early old world civilizations (degree of difference in inequality is less)

Uniformity of Harappan Culture

• Perhaps due to tight bureaucratic control

• Standardized measures

• Many sites planned according to grids and w/ walled precincts, bath, ect.

  • In smaller communities they have more modest baths and smaller ceremonial platforms

Harrappan writing - undeciphered ~ 400 unique signs

• Some on stamps and seals

Collapse of Harappan Civilization

Sir Mortimer Wheeler

• Aryan invasion theory

• Rig Veda (oldest Vedic sanskrit literature) refers to consent - not well dated

• Aryans: speakers of Indo-European Languages (central asia)

• Approx 3 dozen unburied bodies at Mohenjo-daro (is that really evi for invasions?)

• No archaeological evidence of a mass invasion

George Dales and Robert Raikes

• Tectonic uplift and flooding

• Earthquake triggers flooding of floodplain incl. Mohenjo-daro

• Disrupts trade, perhaps make Harappa vulnerable to invasion

After the decline of Harappan power moves south, central asia shifts east to Ganges river, where large cities dev. by 1100 B.C.

Colonization of the Americas

Different areas - Mesoamerica and Andes

Mesoamerica - modern states of Mexico (central and southern), Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador

South American andean states

Andean Altiplano, Coastal Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Columbia

Other areas where complex societies could have originated - Cahokia near St. Louis MO

Mesoamerica and Andeas were newest

Old World vs New world States

Similarities

• Domestication of plants and animals occurs when we see pop growth

• Then emergence of complex societies and complex states

• Similarities in process of domestication

  • (different set of domesticates)

    • Old world: Wheat, Barley, rice, millet

    • New World: Maize, Beans, squash, gourds, chiles, avocado, tomato, root crops (manioc), cotton

• Similarities in the biology of domesticates

  • Seeds annually

  • Esat to manipulate genetically

  • Adapted to a wide range of environments

  • Easily stores

  • A gradual evolution rather than a sudden evolution

• Similar trends in the origins of state

  • Interregional exchange of goods (polychrome pottery form S mexico)

  • Mobilization of labor for constriction of monumental buildings

  • Writing (mesoamerica only)

    • Maya Hieroglyphic writing

    • Aboutre…..

  • Elite artistic style that communicated unifying ideologies (religious ideas)

    • Theocracies

    • Ideas communicate things that united people and conflict

    • Sculpture from the maya site of palenque

    • Religious ceremonies were religious ceremonies

  • Elite control of religious ideology

    • Inka rulers seen as a descendant from the sun god

Differences

• Large-scale irrigation less important 

  • Large rains

• More gradual transition from domestication to full blown agriculture economies

  • In mesopotamia it took 2000-2500 years

  • In mesoamerica took about 6500 years (8000 BC to 1500 BC)

• Importance of domestication animals

  • Old world animals were domesticated with plants

  • New world - took longer

    • Mesoamerica: Dog, turkey, bees

    • Andes: Llamas, guinea pigs, alpacas, turkey, dog

Human entry into america

Late pleistocene 

1st people to enter the america

• From east asia (b/c of similarities w/ east asians and Natives) - 

  • Blood Types

  • DNA

  • Tonal language (tone determines meaning)

How did they get to america?

Bering Land Bridge (Beringia) - could walk from siberia to alaska and it was unglaciated

• Environment would have been tundra like

  • But I would have heard of animals (mastodon, Giant Sloth Horse, Bison, ect.

Problem was going south to america (covered by continental glaciers

• Theory: There were some ice free corridor

  • They are now underwater so it’s difficult to find evidence

When did ppl get to america

Every year we find ppl finding diff sites that they thing is before Paleo indian site

• Each time the sites got shot down

• Until 1980s - Monte Verde Site, Chile (12 000 or 13 000 BC)

  • Lots of organic material that they could carbon date

  • Artifacts

Paleo indian period (11 000 or 10 000 BC)

Hunting and gathering

• Low pop

• Relied hunting of megafauna 

• They had tech that would enable them to get through hide of animals

• 8 000 BC pleistocene animals are extinct

• Ppl shifting to holocene living patterns

Early Agriculture in Mesoamerica

The Archaic Period (8000 - 2000 BC)

More ecologically diverse area

2 environmental zones

Highlands and lowlands

Highlands:

Mountainous areas, 1000 meters

Rougad

cool /temperate climate b/c of elevation

Highest peaks are volcanoes

Not best for agriculture

Major Populations centers are in highland valleys - better for agriculture

• Valley rivers (dry up during some seasons - irrigation still wouldn’t help)

Locations of Highlands: Southern Mexico, Pyramid of Cholula (popocatépetl volcano almost 18000 ft),

Highland valleys: Teotihuacan & Aztecs

• Basin of Mexico largest cities of Mesoamerica

• Teotihuacan - 200 000 ppl during classic period

• 34 000 AD

• Aztec empire was centered here

• Mexico city is centered here (central mexico)

In southern Mexico Valley of oaxaca (Zapotecs and Monte Albán)

• Very flat surrounded by mountains

• About 8000 ft

• Where Zapotec speaking people lived and still do

• Archaeological site Monte Albán

South east to Guatemala and Honduras:

• Medium and small sized valleys Maya Highlands

Lowlands:

Mainly (not only) on the coast

Hotter more rainfall

• Tropical and semi tropical

Gulf Coast

• Very hot and wet tropical area

• Many marsh and swamp

• Olmec people

Northern Maya Lowlands (Yucatan)

• Dryer than most lowlands

• Most water is underground (rivers and aquifers)

• Sites: Checunitsa, tulum, mayapan, cancun

Southern Maya Lowlands (Belize, northern half of guatemala)

• Sites: Tikal

  • Lots of rainfall, large temples

  • Much of the jungle was cleared when it was a city

Narrow strip along pacific coast:

Greatest rainfall rates in all of mesoamerica

West and north you get less rainfall

Seasons

Dry and Wet season

Dry: November to may

• No rain

• All plants die

• Turns brown

Wet: May-november

• Vegetation explodes

Not much temp variation

The Archaic Period (8000 - 2000 BC)

Not many sites - small

b/c pop low and ppl were mobile, only when temp allowed it did they grow crops (few and far between)

Domesticates were a minor part of data throughout the period

• Important period of time b/c it is beginning of domestication of certain plants

Best understood sites are rock and cave shelters

• Coxcatlán Cave - Tehuacán, Mexico (Richard MacNeish - highland valley site - 60s and 70s)

• Settlements were occupied occasionally and for a short about of time

• These were dry caves - organic preservation was really good

• Most of what is known about archaic period is based off these sites which weren’t important sites - so facts are a little skewed

Projectile points

• No pottery

• Broad based subsistence

• Gradual adoption of Domesticates

  • Gourds and Squash (8000 BC)

  • Maize(7000MC0

  • Chili and Amaranth (5000BC)

  • Beans (4000 BC)

• Ppl release of flooding water and rainfall farming

  • Cultivation was seasonal

• Can’t call these people farmers because they would only occasionally grow crops

Reconstruction of an Early Formative Household (2000 BC - 830)

Fully sedentary villages of 25-50 houses and 200-300 people

• Ppl depend on domesticates

• Living near each other sedentary villages

• Maya wattle and daub houses with thatch roof

  • Walls made of thing posts (wattle) and slap clay and mud and the walls form

• When abandoned houses fall apart and decay (hard to see when excavated)

• But if the house is burned then the house is preserved/ impressions stay behind

  • Had Bell shaped pits

    • Used for storage or burials when got old or garbage dumps

    • Large pits

  • Burials → egalitarian societies, achieved status different

• Ceramics starting

  • Makes sites more visible

  • Figurines are made, people or animals, deities

    • Beginning of formative period - women (no clothes, have ornaments and have elaborate hairstyles)

    • These figurines of women were worn of ppl

    • Different life stages

      • Made by women for ceremonial purposes

      • When women go from one storage to another

Theories of Agricultural Origins

Theories from the old world apply?

Oasis theory (Childe) - doesn’t work b/c no oasis

Binfords stress model - 1st evidence of domestication beginning of formative period and then population growth follows (goes against Binford’s theory’s timeline)

Nuclear Zone Theory

• Adopted by Richard MacNeish → “”settling In” Hypothesis

  • Nuclear zones were in highland valleys

  • Ppl would exploit and learn about them 

  • He worked in the highland Tehuacán valley

Problem is that Highland valleys didn’t offer many crops (maize a common domesticated plant can’t grow in the highlands)

Kent Flannery’s “seasonal Scheduling” Hypothesis

• Based on the assumption that domestication occurred first in the highland valleys

• Flannery studied in the island of oaxaca

• Believed we should look at human pop as systems

  • Maintaining an equilibrium between environment

  • We can explain human innovations as having resulted from imbalance between pop and resources in environment

• Focused on Maize

Seasonal scheduling Hypothesis:

• Looking at pop size, and available resources and technology 

• Mobility and lack of resources kept populations low (birth spacing) during Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods

• Mobility requires portable technologies

• Teosinte as a weed successful around Archaic period hunting camps (grew well around campsites)

• Increasing cultivation led to increasing sedentism

• Sedentism led to pop growth, which causes ppl to focus even more on domesticates

• More intensive management of teosinte leads to domestication of corn

Domestication of corn would require people to stay in one place to take care of the corn

• Pop grows b/c birth spacing stops

• And now ppl need to focus on growing more corn (positive feedback loop)

Technological changes: Mano and metate (grind-stone tools)

Issues with Flanery’s theory

• Teosinte is not very productive

Other edible plants were more productive

What is the short term benefit of teosinte?

• Maize was first domesticated in lowlands of West Mexico

• Not enough evidence

  • Archeologists aren't looking for small sites to explain the beginnings of domestication (rather look at ancient cities)

Start of Social Complexity 

Early Formative period (2000/1500-800 B.C.) starts at diff times in diff places in Mesoamerica

Middle Formative period (800-400 B.C.)

First emergence of social complexity in Ismith of Toanto Pec, highlands and lowlands descend into low hills

Easier to move from atlantic to pacific

Along pan-Isthmian Corrido complex societies dev

First develop in southern isthmus - Soconusco coast (S mexico and guatemala coast)

• Hereditary social inequality by 1600-1400

• Small villages - couple 100 ppl

• Large villages - 1000 ppl; public buildings on low platforms

• Have different sized residences

• Have some monumental buildings

• Small scaled chiefdoms

• Trading w/ ppl in gulf coast regions

Olmec: Religion, Trade & Politics

Olmec first well documented mesoamerican cultures

Sites: La Venta

Known for massive carve stones heads of rulers

Art - religiously and politically significant

• Close knit relationship between rulers and divinity 

• They look human but have features that look jaguarian 

  • Jaguar was a divine powerful being

  • Represents Olmec Elites that were able to merge with jaguars

Olmec Jade Masks

• Worn by rulers (taking on the lifeforce or impersonating jaguars)

• Becoming divinity

Matthew Stirling

One of first to recognize how advanced/complex Olmec society 

Excavated at several olmec political centers in the 1930 and 1940s

Heart of Olmec region was Gulf coast

Best understood sites: San Lorenzo, La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros

San Lorenzo

Wet and tropical hot region 

Important during 1200 - 800 B.C. (late early formative)

Ceremonial centers: massive platforms (were temples and high status houses were built)

• Used earth and architecture for platform

Large numbers of Olmec Heads - made from dense volcanic rock

• Made of basalt: closest source of basalt 100s of miles away

  • Would have needed to carve out chunks from a quarry 

  • And transported them to San Lorenzo

  • Shows the importance of the rocks (b/c of effort it took to bring them)

    • Transported over land and through river system

  • Shows the power of the rulers (could mobilize labor for portraits of themselves)

Area around San Lorenzo

• Very productive

• They grew crops

• Had fishing technologies

1st city in mesoamerica

Decline around 800 BC

La Venta (800-400 BC)

Today a lot of the site of La venta is destroyed - b/c of oil extraction

Site covers 500 ha

Ceremonial Center - first pyramid

34m high

People argue that pyramids could have been modeled on volcanoes

Elaborate offerings under plaza

• Jaguar face

• Gave life to ceremonial centers b/c used precious stones that people believed had power and life essence

• Jaguar figures

• Jade figures (only jade source known is highlands of guatemala so far away)

• Basalt tombs 

  • 2 juveniles

  • Offering in jade shell ornaments

  • Stingray spines (tail of stingray) used for drawing your own blood

  • Ascribed status

Evidence of Olmec elites power

• Communication with goods

• Closer association with divine

• From art

  • Stela (free standing stone monument)

    • Show: olmec elites communicating with each other and their ancestors (from beyond the grave)

  • Olem Thrones

    • Almost as big as colossal heads

    • Person seated (ruler b/c of head dress)

      • Top of the Throne has a band with an animal face

      • Referred to as an earth monster (symbolized earth)

    • Ruler sitting at the entrance to a cave - symbolic entrance of underworld

    • 3 world of existence on mesoamerican cosmology (celestial heavens, earth, and underworld)

    • So olmec rulers were halfway in the underworld and half way on earth

    • Meaning they could move and exist in both world

  • Were-Jaguar

    • Images of powerful noble/rulers that could merge with jaguar

    • Depict transformation (mainly human looking with some jaguar features)

    • They are wearing clothes (headdress worn by rulers)

  • Were-Jaguar babies - not sticking theories

Ritual Transformations

Used mind altering chemicals - Bones of Marine Toads Bufo Marinus

• When threatened they suck in air and blow up

• And secrete a toxin

• Debate that ppl could extract the toxic

• But there are many bones around sites

Trade and Prestige goods

Jade masks

• Another way of merging with divinity

Jade Celts

• Offerings

Iron ore Mirrors

• Used to communicate with divinity

• Had to be imported from Highlands

Bloodletting devices

• Offering to goods (lifeforce - blood)

• Stingray spines - cut your tongue

• Or Fancier Bloodletting devices - use by elites

Impact of Olmec on the rest of Mesoamerica

Mother vs Sister culture Theories

Mother Culture Theory

Olmec were farm more complex than other societies during middle formative

• They are the foundation of all other deities and cultures

Sister culture Theory

Societies of same complexity evolved side by side and their cultures evolved together as they traded and shared ideas

Evidence of Cross culture interactions

Early Formative

• Exchange of iron ore, mirrors, and obsidian

• Shared motifs on ceramic vessels & figurines

  • Sharing of ideas: same design/motifs on pots

    • Representation of deities

  • Same designs for figurines (especially were-jaguares)

• Obsidian

  • Everyday cutting tools

  • Sometimes more elaborate

Evidence of more direct contact with Olmec

Imagery on Carved Stone monuments

Southern coast of Mexico to El Salvador (site: chalchuapa, El Salvador or Chalcatzingo, Mexico)

Images of Olmec Rulers

• Holding staff, cape, has a jaguar face

• Suggests that there are Olmec rulers were there

  • Could have been from conquering land (unlikely)

  • Could have been from intermarrying

  • Or Olmec Emissaries establishing trade alliances

Concluding the Mother vs Sister Theory

Combination of both

Multiple regions were exchanging and trading goods

But olmec were most complex in early formative

• Olmec most important part of circulating ideas

At this time there is an emergence of complex societies

• Rulers are desperate for ideas that distinguish them from their people

Identifying Factors related to Emergence of Complex Societies in MesoAM

Ideology and religion

• Irrigation was not important

• Some trade and warfare

Olmec elites having a special relationship with divinity

• Ppl paid taxes to rulers

• And they carried out important rituals communicating with their gods

Not economic managers

More managers of Cosmos/ relationships of divine

Origins of Mesoamerican States - Sacrifice and the Sacred Covenant

Sacrifice - generically not just human (b/c that wasn’t as common, Aztec did it the most)

Political - religious power was justified through series of sacred propositions

• Laid out in creating narratives

Mixtec Codex - Creation narrative from Pre-Hispanic books

From the Mixtec region of oaxaca

Also from early colonial Aztec oral histories

Maya Popul Vuh

Explain how political hierarchy and relationships between polities were often communicated in sacrificial terms

• Justification of resources taken from commoners

Mixtec Creation Story

• Interaction with powerful deities associated with earth & sky and a sacred covenant or agreement formed between Mixtec ancestors and these Gods

• Story begins by people unsuccessfully trying to grow crops (Maize)

• They pierce the earth with their digging sticks, which causes the deities great pain

  • Ppl could not do agriculture (which is the foundation of Mesoamerican culture)

• Leads to the War of Heaven

  • Between ancestors and the gods

• People & Gods forge the sacred covenant

  • Truce made

• People agree to offer sacrifices to the goods in return for agriculture

• The ultimate form of sacrifice is death (before this people may have been immortal or lived a very long time) 

  • Ppl agree to die and to go in earth (which is a deity)

• People sacrifice in return for the sacrifices of the Gods

• Through sacrifice people petition the deities for fertility & prosperity

Ppl eat maize from the earth 

And the earth eats us (when they die)

Relationship between religion and politics

Consistencies:

• Creation of current world (the world they were living in)

• Involves conflict between ppl and gods

• Results in a Sacred Covenant (agreement)

  • In order to perform agriculture must offer something to the gods

  • Sacrifices or offerings

• Asking the gods for prosperity (in warfare sometimes) and fertility

Different forms of sacrifice

Human sacrifice

This was an important and sacred ceremony it was the most powerful humans could communicate with the gods

• This was a rare ceremony 

  • When rulers can to power

• Performed by and on nobles (captured nobles)

Common form - heart sacrifice

Heart could be burned after - done with a sacrificial knife

Believes that heat had most life force

References to human sacrifice: through imagery and writing in Pre-Hispanic Era

• Maya carved stone monument

• Carved on sacrificial altars

• Mixtec Codices

Sacrificial knives

Victims of sacrifice were war captives 

Decapitated skulls would be displayed

• Showing your power (message to ruler’s enemies)

• Rulers generosity, saying they were communicating with the gods (message to the people)

Autosacrifice

Piercing genitals and tongue

• Practiced by nobles and common people 

• More powerful when done by nobles

Could used elaborate bloodletters

Offerings of goods (Animal Sacrifices)

Often birds

Taxes counted as offerings or sacrifices

Earth offerings - placing things in the ground (which was living)

Blacking objects under buildings brings life to the buildings

Burning on Incense

Nobility’s role in sacrifices

Original sacrifices were nobles

Sacrificial blood of nobles was the most powerful

Through bloodletting nobles could open portal allowing communication with Deities and ancestors

In some cases ancestors of the rulers would become deities with more power

Relationships between Nobles, Commoners and Deities

Social contract

• Elites has special ritual roles and carried out the most potent forms of ritual so as to petition the deities for prosperity and fertility on behalf of all their people

• Commoners depending on elites to carry out these rituals

• Commoners receive security and prosperity

• In retyre, commoners provided allegiance and tribute to nobles

• Elites gain in wealth, but have special religious and political roles and were often sought for capture and sacrifice

Commoners could not perform sacrifices

• There were rules against it

• AND for the most powerful sacrifices you would need to capture nobles from enemy regions and commoners didn’t have the military power for that

From the Codex

Ancestors of nobles are born from sacred trees, caves, or clefs in the earth 

Commoners are born from earth of mud (humble)

When do we start to see sacrifice

Middle formative after 800 BC

• Start to see sacrifice

Especially after 500-100 BC 

• Start to see cities, state emerging

B/c nobles and commoners are distinguished by religion there is clear distinction and they are more organized

States and cities

Monte Alban - Valley of Oaxaca

Teotihuacan - base of mexico

El Mirador - southern Maya lowlands

Monte Alban - Valley of Oaxaca

Mountain top city - in the middle of the Valley of Oaxaca

San Jose Mogote, Mound 1

Ppl intentionally founded this religious and political area

• 1-2 century Prior to 500 BC

Ppl build large platform at the cite

•  Built templet

• And house (for rulers of San Jose Mogote)

Also built Monument 3 - earliest evidence of human sacrifice → on a tablet

• Also first evidence of writing

500-100 BC ppl leave San jose Mogote

Grew rapidly after (400 Ha 1500 ppl)

• Set up in Monte Alban (founded 500 BC)

• Plaza

• Ball courts

• Temple

Towers over the valley

Towards the end we see evidence for social inequality 

Early years of Monte Alban

Construction of temples (two room temple)

• Outer room religious specialist ppl met with other

• Inner room restricted to religious specialist

Ball courts

• Ritual building

Palaces were built

• Around the plaza

• Large elaborate residences

• Had tomb under houses

  • Elites buried

Evidence of ceremonies around the plaza

• Transformation (nobles merging with diets)

• Autosacrifice emphasized in imagery on bain plaza (carvins [Danzante] in the side of buildings depicting genital autosacrifice)

• Building L-sub Danzante 

  • There was alternating slaps

  • vertical slabs of people depicting autosacrifice

  • Horizontal slabs depicting ancestors

• Depicts auto sacrificial rituals and communication with ancestors

• Some depictions of Human decapitation

Around the plaza it talks about ruler “8 water” 

Alose imagery portraying a ruler are monte Alban (only portrait of ruler)

• Depicted letting blood from tongue and genitals

• Holding a jaguar head (could be decapitated enemy ruler)

Other carve slabs at Building J 

• Refers to the name of the building

• Ancestors (or sacrifices)

Defensive wall at Monte Alban

Evidence for conflict

• Competition between rulers of different polities

• Not major territorial conflict

Teotihuacan - base of mexico

Largest pre Hispanic city in the Americas

Emerges as an Urban center at the end to the Formative (100 BC to AD 300)

• The ceremonial center was oriented along a wide street (street of the Dead)

• Names came from the aztecs

Size

AD 1 - 6-8 sq km 20,000 ppl

AD 300: 20 sq km 90,000 ppl

Evidence that it was a planned city

Major ceremonial buildings around the street of the dead

• Ppl lived in large apartment complexes

Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon

Sun - 61 meters high, 213 meters on a side

Temple of Quetzalcoatl

• Important mexican god

• Part of the creation of the world, the god goes to the underworld and defeats underworld deity by sacrificing himself to create time and new creations

There are images of Quetzalcoatl on the edge of the building

Temple was excavated in 1980s

As you excavate you see earlier makings of the building

• Instead of scraping away at the outer part

• The buildings are tunneled into 

Problems:

Inside is volcanic rock the could crumble or cave in

• Used scaffolding to protect archeologist

As they got to the center they ground human bodies

• Unusual - the jewelry was jaw bonds (upper part of the jaw so they had to be carved out)

• There were inlays in the teeth

• Burials had hands bound so they must have been human sacrifices

  • Transferred the lifeforce of the people to the building (which is a temple)

Cities and States of Ancient Mesoamerica

Late Formative Period (400 BC AD 300)

El Mirador, Nother Guatemala 6km²

• Has some of the largest buildings in the Maya region

  • Had large temple platforms

  • References to creation period and sacrifice

    • Represented no as carved stones but as large pyramids with plaster masks that reference creation narrative and sacrifice

Maya Highlands

• Evidence of Human sacrifice

• Other bodies lying around nobles (know they were sacrificial victims b.c of marks on bones)

Izapa Stela 21

• Image depicting sacred covenant

• Ruler is decapitating a victim
  
  

Classical Period (AD300-900)

Changes at Monte Alban

6 sq km 50,000 ppl

Gets bigger

There are residential terraces on houses

Teotihuacan

22km² 150,000-200,000 ppl

Top 5 of cities world wide at the time

Social organization was different

• Usually: imagery showing rulers and tombs

• But here: there is imagery but no rulers portraits

  • There are nobles but they are more general elites 

• No identification of rulers houses

• Some people argue more corporate form of rulers

• Maybe they were unable to generate wealth

The apartments complexes were also unusual

• There were many rooms all together with prayer rooms 

• More elaborate houses - had painted murals

Teo was still a economic powerhouse

Evidence of import and exports

• Goods from distant places

• Exported: Pottery, Obsidian

  • Number of obsidian sources around Teo - Green obsidian

  • Many workshops to produce obsidian tools

Maya City-States - Tikal, Copán, Palenque

Northern maya lowlands and higher maya lowlands

Each city states had their own ruling dynasty 

Conflict amongst rulers for prestige and economic control

• There were some alliances to fight against another city

• But alliances were always changing

Lowlands Maya

Carved stone explaining history

Tikal - Guatemala

One of the largest 

123 km² around 100,000ppl

Civic ceremonial center of city

• Palaces

• Temples

• Ball courts

• Tombs of rulers

• Great plaza

• 2 stepped pyramids - l;arge step platforms

• Freestanding stone monuments Stelae

Stelae

Have carvings in them (images of rulers)

Tells us about the rulers (glyphic texts)

• When they lives die, 

• When they became rulers, mariages, alliances they formed, conquests

Copán - southeast maya periphery

600-700 AD expanded and conquered several cities nearby

Center of the city was on an Acropolis (huge platform with multiple buildings)

Known for sculptures (sometimes of rulers)

20 ft high 

18-Rabbit (name of a ruler)

• Most influential ruler in Copán history

• Led to capture of many smaller cities

737 AD Quiriguá attempted to break away from Copán

• 18-Rabbit is captured by the ruler of Quriguá

• And is sacrificed through decapitation

Copán’s Hieroglyphic Stairway

Every step had a hieroglyph

Largest period text in the Maya regions

History of rulers (22000)

Palenque

Edge of highlands and lowlands

Known for amazing architecture

• Massive Palace

• Multi story buildings

• 4 story tower

Temple of the inscriptions

• Inside temple on top of pyramids there were inscriptions

Alberto Ruz - noticed a slight depression in the plaster floor

• Found a subterranean chamber in center of temple

• Found the tomb of the most important ruler of Palenque

• Tomb of Lord Pacal discovered in 1952

• The capstone of the sarcophagus depicts Pascal falling into the underworld

• Believed that rulers were through to go to the underworld to feed the underworld deities and then rise to heaven

What life like during the Classical period

People were made up of mostly farmers  (some were craftspeople, textile makers)

• Lived in modest housing

• Thatch, waddell and daub, mud brick

  • 1 building (sleeping quarters), everything else in the patio

Slash and burn agriculture

Most common agriculture - takes advantage of season in tropics (rainy and dry)

At end of dry season, farmers cut down any vegetation and let it dry

• Just before the rains come they burn

Ash acts as fertilizer

If you burn too early you fertilizer blows away

Too late → hard to burn

• Requires lots of land

More productive agriculture

• Raised field agriculture 

  • Focuses on wet swampy and marshy land

  • Farmers dig a lattice canals (like a checkerboard)

  • And throw dirt in between canals → less waterlogged

  • Can grow crops year round

• Can only do it in coastal areas

In mountainous areas

• Agricultural terraces

• Use stone walls like steps that go down mountain

• Preserves topsoil

Nobility lived around ceremonial centers

• High-status housing

• Depended on taxes paid by populous

• Power came from religions (they could communicate with the gods)

• Status see by:

  •  type of jewelry that nobles wore

  • Jade inlaid into the teeth

  • Exotic goods they had

    • Polychrome vase

• Only nobles could read

  • Even smaller amount could write

• Knowledge of the calendar

• There were many calendars

  • Solar calendar

  • 260-day ritual calendar

  • 52-year calendar

Imagery of:

• Bloodletting (noble sacrifices were more potent)

• Transformation 

• Human sacrifices (no often)

• Communicating with ancestors (ancestors of nobles were more powerful)

• Ball games

• Warfare

The Classic period collapse and the rise of the Aztec Empire

Classic period Collapse (AD 600-900)

Population at urban centers declines; many cities are abandoned, but people continue

Collapse of political authority - end or ruling dynasty

Cessation of the construction of monumental buildings and palaces

Cessation in the raising of stelae

Cessation of hieroglyphic writing

There is a west to east collapse as the polities gradually come to an end

First: Teotihuacan AD 600

Monte Alban AD 700

Maya Cities persist until AD 900

Theories of the Classic Period Collapse

1) Environmental degradation due to land use

• Hundreds of year of intensive agriculture

• Lose of soil fertility 

• Erosion

b/c agricultural systems fail → political decline → dispersal

2) Internal conflict/Rebellion

3) Change in the nature of warfare

• Warfare mutch larger in scale

• No longer about elite status

• Now it was about territory 

4) Climate Change

• There was a drought at the end of the classical period

• Disrupting Agricultural practices 

There is not one theory that works everywhere

Some areas multiple theories work others only have evidence of one theory 

Late classic Settlements in the Copán Valley

By end of classic period there is evidence of declining fertility of soil and increasing erosion

Impacting people:

• Evidence of malnutrition (sponginess of skull)

This wasn’t representative of the rest of mesoamerica

Teotihuacan - possible internal revolve

Burned houses

Streat of the dead is abandoned

Intentionally broken ceramics

Southern Maya lowlands - Changes in warfare

Number of cities were ppl dismantled monumental buildings to build walls

Climate change evidence in Maya area

Difficult to connect change in climate to every other polity’s collapse

Mesoamerican Postclassic (AD 900-1521)

New political centers:

Tula of Toltecs (northern basin of mexico [north of Teotihuacan])

Chichén Itzá (Yucatán Peninsula) - might have been the capital of the largest Maya polity ever

Aztecs

1 century before the Spanish come to conquer the land the Aztec comes to power (1426-1428)

• Center of the Aztec empire is in the Basin of Mexico

• Aztec Capital: city of Tenochtitlan (today it is beneath the streets of Mexico city 

Origins

They were located in North Mexico outside of Mesoamerica (they weren’t mesoamerican people)

• Different groups were migrating south 

• Seen as barbarians and uncultured 

• Sometimes hired as mercenaries

• Through time they became more powerful and more mesoamerican 

Thanks to one of the alliances during the Great war of 1426-1428 - the aztecs come to power

Once in power

The initiated a series of innovations (in politics and religion)

Helped solidify their power

• Human sacrifice (elevated to center of their religion)

• Became more common

• Over 1000 people sacrificed

• Displayed the skulls as sign of power

Part of what drove Aztec imperial expansion was the 

• need for more victims to sacrifice

• And Economics 

  • Concerning places and setting up tributary resources from them

Helped them cover most of central Mexico

Capital city of Tenochtitlan

150,000 to 200,000ppl

Built in the middle of the shallow lakes

Amazing architectures there were causeways to connect city and main land

Ceremonial center - scale was large

Temple was a massive pyramid 

• 2 temple complex

• This is where sacrificial ceremonies were carried out 

When the spanish came they took apart the buildings and built the cathedral with it

By 16th century Aztec empire had expanded to its limits

Many ppl had been conquered and were tired of aztec oppression

• Had trouble keeping the empire together

• THis is when the spanish arrived

Hernán Cortés (AD 1519)

Arrived in the Gulf coast, and they were interested in Tenochtitlan and the gold

• As they traveled them made alliances with enemies of the Aztecs

• Cortés a few hundred Spaniards and an army of Central Mexican groups (enemies of Aztecs[50-70,000 warriors]) that conquered Tenochtitlan 

Over the next several hundred decades the rest of mesoamerica was conquered

The disease that the Spanish brought with them also helped the spanish take over mesoamerica

• Sometimes wiping out entire communities before they got there

Overview of Mesoamerica

Ideologies were the driving factor of the polities and the social hierarchies 

Andean Civilizations

South America Geography

Andes - western part of south america

• Highlands

  • Many valleys

  • High valleys are high than mesoamerica

    • Titicaca Basin (12 000 ft of elevation)

  • During rainy season it can get quite cold

  • They have large shallow lakes

• Lowlands (pacific coastal)

  • Arid

  • Dry 

  • Traditional Fish on the Andean Coast

Pre society history - Paleoindian Period (10,000-8000 B.C.)
The Andean Preceramic (8000-1800B.C)

• Highland domesticates (5500-4000B.C.): guinea pig, llamas, squash, quinoa grain, chile pepper, potatoes

• Maize introduced from the north by 3200 BC coastal domestication somewhat later

• Population growth and sedentism along the bose but 4000-2500 b.c.

• Complex societies on the coast by 2500-1800 B.C (Caral and El Paraíso)

Chavín Culture (900-200 B.C.)

Evidence for chiefdoms

• Trade of

• Ideas

  • Carved stone monuments

    • Part humans

    • Part snake/jaguar/bird

  • Depict transformational rituals

  • Rulers are able to merge with animals

  • Site of Chavin de Huántar

• Goods

• Culture

Between groups

200 BC -600 AD First andean states

States emerging in the highlands

Numeros up and down the coast (they relied on irrigation agriculture)

Nazca state

• Known for geoglyphs that were created in the desert

• Depict animals 

Moche state 

north coast of Peru

• Used irrigation agriculture

• And raise fields

• Evidence of Rulership 

  • Imagery

    • On stone monuments

    • On poetry

      • No writing only images

  • Housing

  • Burials (ornamented rulers + accompanied by believed sacrificial people)

    • Best evidence of hierarchy

    • b/c pacific coast is so dry - everything is preserved very well

• The state was centered around monumental buildings

  • Huaca del Sol

Reason for Collapse of State

El Nino event

And Large scale earthquake

• Damaged agriculture

• Changed course of Moche river