Fissioning, Scalar Stress, and Social Evolution in Early Village Societies

Theories of social evolution have predicted that early permanent population concentrations will frequently be unstable, with fissioning the predominant mechanism for resolving intravillage conflict. It has further been suggested that village fissioning will cease with the emergence of higher-level i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American anthropologist 2004-06, Vol.106 (2), p.322-333
Main Author: Bandy, Matthew S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Archaeological paradigms
Archaeology
Archeology
Bolivia
Communities
Community
Conflict
Ethnology
Formative period
Historical source materials
Keywords
Lake Titicaca
Modeling Social Processes
Paleoanthropology
Population density
Population growth
scalar stress
Scalarity (Semantics)
Scalars
Social change
Social conflict
Social evolution
Social integration
Social research
Social structure
Sources and methods
Stress
Theory
Towns
Turner, Victor
village fissioning
Villages
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Summary:Theories of social evolution have predicted that early permanent population concentrations will frequently be unstable, with fissioning the predominant mechanism for resolving intravillage conflict. It has further been suggested that village fissioning will cease with the emergence of higher-level integrative institutions. These processes have remained archaeologically undocumented. In this article I attempt to identify the village fissioning process in the Formative Period of Bolivia's Titicaca Basin. I conclude that village fissioning took place in the Early Formative, and that it ceased with the emergence of a regional religious tradition in the Middle Formative. These results confirm the utility and applicability of the evolutionary model.
ISSN:0002-7294
1548-1433
DOI:10.1525/aa.2004.106.2.322