Functional and Evolutionary Implications of Community Patterning

Abstract

The classification of cultures into a workable number of types for descriptive or interpretative ends has occupied anthropologists since the science was born. Many kinds of data have been selected. Within the last decade Coon's (1948) subdivision of human societies into six levels on the basis of complexity of institutions, and the attempts by Strong (1948), Armillas (1948), Steward (1949), Willey and Phillips (1955) to distinguish developmental periods in the Mesoamerican and Andean archaeological sequences may be cited. Our excuse for attempting yet another formulation is that the current schemes emphasize either ethnographic criteria that are difficult or impossible to detect archaeologically, or unique features of particular cultural configurations rather than general criteria defining more universal patterns. Starting from a point of view different from those heretofore employed, we have tried to develop a classification of cultures that is usable with both ethnographical and archaeological data and that has functional and evolutionary as well as historical and descriptive significance.

Site size hierarchy in middle-range societies

“…Identifying regional political hierarchy by the presence of site size hierarchy is a common practice in archaeology. The practice of using site size to identify hierarchical, politically centralized societies began in North America in the 1950s and 1960s, where ball courts and mounds in the Americas were also used to distinguish central places from normal villages and hamlets (Beardsley et al, 1956;Blanton, 1972;Parsons, 1971). Over the years, however, site size hierarchy-in the absence of monumental architecture-has often come to be used as an indication of regional political hierarchy (Creamer and Haas, 1985;Earle, 1987;Gilman, 1981;Johnson, 1973Johnson, , 1977Johnson, , 1978Liu, 1996;Kristiansen and Larsson, 2005:125, 158;Milisauskas and Kruk, 1984;Molnár, 2002, 2012;Peregrine, 2004:285).…”

Results of Instrument Neutron-Activation Trace-Element Analysis of Human Remains from the Naknek Region, Southwest Alaska

“…Late prehistoric human remains in the Naknek region represent a population with a subsistence lifeway of hunting and fishing (Dumond 1980(Dumond , 1987Harritt 1988). Traditional Eskimo settlement patterns are classified as central-based wandering (Beardsley et al 1956;Oswalt 1967), and subsistence strategies can be characterized broadly as a pattern in which transhumancy of a population within a tribal territory reflects seasonal exploitation of resources distributed across the region (Binford 1980). As reconstructed from archaeological remains and ethnographic analogues, the lifeways of these prehistoric peoples were geared toward exploitation of game principally consisting of sea mammals, caribou, and salmon (Dumond 1980).…”

Moccasin Confluence: Occupation and Settlement in the Lower Fredericksburg Basin of the Edwards Plateau

“…The collector mode is similar to the "Central Based Wandering Community Model" (Beardsley et al 1956). Within each site category, one can expect further variability that may relate to the seasonal availability and character of the resources being exploited by logistically organized task groups.…”