By studying chiefdoms kin-based societies in which a person s place in a kinship system determines his or her social status and political position this book addresses several fundamental questions concerning the nature of political power and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. In a chiefdom,[...]
By combining an original thesis and a representative body of ethnographic data, this ambitious work seeks to describe and explain the growth in complexity of human societies. Its emphasis is on the causes, mechanisms, and patterns of cultural evolution, which the authors explain in terms of a cohere[...]