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Michael E. Smith
Trigger, Bruce G. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xiii 757 pp.
Smith, Adam T. The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early
Complex Polities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xv 331 pp.
Bruce Triggers and Adam Smiths comparative studies of state-level
societies provide new theoretical approaches and are important components in a resurgence of explicit comparative analysis of early states by
archaeologists. Trigger presents a massive systematic comparison of
seven ancient states on an unusually large number of themes, whereas
Smith carries out more intensive comparisons of a smaller sample on
more limited themes. These well-written works make significant contributions to a number of areas, including empirical analysis, theory, and
comparative methods.
Keywords: States, complex societies, ancient civilizations
M. E. Smith
M. E. Smith
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Table 1.
Culture
Trigger
Egypt
North China
Inka
Mesopotamia
Aztec
Maya
Yoruba and Benin
Smith
Maya
Urartu
Mesopotamia
Period
Political form
territorial state
territorial state
territorial state
city-states
city-states
city-states
city-states
Classic
Iron Age
Ur III to Old Babylonian
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undue uniformity on the data. Kingship had a different specific meaning in every early civilization, as did slavery and the concept of an
upper class. Yet these differences cannot be allowed to obscure the
great similarities in sociopolitical organization that early civilizations
came to share as a result of convergent development. To ignore these
similarities out of loyalty to hoary dogmas of cultural relativism or historical particularism would be as misleading as to ignore cultural differences in the name of unilinear cultural evolutionism. [pp. 274275]
The second major substantive section in Understanding Early Civilizations is Economy. It is divided into the following chapters:
Chapter 14, Food Production; Chapter 15, Land Ownership;
Chapter 16, Trade and Craft Specialization; and Chapter 17,
Appropriation of Wealth.
Given the generally low level of sophistication that most archaeologists apply to the economic analysis of ancient states (M. E. Smith
2004), Triggers rigorous discussion of economic topics is welcome.
Again, this section of the book closes with a synthetic chapter,
Economic Constants and Variables. In opposition to mid-twentieth-century discussion of the rise of states by Wittfogel, Steward,
and their followers, Trigger reports that Unexpected variation has
been found amongst these societies, however, in environmental settings, population density, intensity of agriculture, and the geographical mobility of people (p. 395). His data support the notion that
population pressure causes agricultural intensification, but not the
extension of this argument that posits population pressure (or intensification) as causes of political centralization or urbanization. Triggers discussion of this issue, a long-standing area of research and
debate in archaeology, would be better if he had cited the recent
literature on intensification theory (e.g., Morrison 1994; Netting
1993). He notes that Interpretations of the economies of early civilizations were long distorted by Karl Polanyis claim that in these
societies trade and production were completely embedded in political organization (p. 402; see also pp. 5960), a point with which I
fully agree (M. E. Smith 2004). Trigger closes this chapter with
insightful observations on the nature and social significance of
conspicuous consumption in ancient states.
The third and final major section of Triggers book is Cognitive
and Symbolic Aspects, and it has the following chapters: Chapter
19, Conceptions of the Supernatural; Chapter 20, Cosmology
and Cosmogony; Chapter 21, Cult; Chapter 22, Priests,
Festivals, and the Politics of the Supernatural; Chapter 23, The
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Individual in the Universe; Chapter 24, Elite Art and Architecture; Chapter 25, Literacy and Specialized Knowledge; and
Chapter 26, Values and Personal Aspirations.
Most comparative discussions of early states by anthropological
archaeologists give little attention to these topicsexcept perhaps
ritual and public architecturefocusing instead on social, political,
and economic phenomena. Treatment of these issues for early states
tends to be particularistic, not comparative. Triggers analysis in this
section thus forges new ground. In these chapters he takes many
well-known authors and viewpoints to task. He is strongly critical
of the heavy use of Mircea Eliades work by archaeologists who study
ancient cosmology: his general ideas seem to have been applied too
dogmatically (p. 470), and his ideas may have become selffulfilling, (p. 445). He calls the notion of power struggles between
priests and secular authorities in ancient states a fantasy (p. 495):
The idea of priests and kings as rivals and of competition between
church and state in early civilizations is not supported by the
evidence. Concepts that seemed appropriate for the understanding
of the history of medieval Europe have been misapplied to these
societies (p. 507). His discussion of writing systems, distinguishing
semasiographic systems from true scripts, is outstanding, leading
him to criticize Jack Goodys notions: [w]riting in the early civilizations did not produce the intellectual transformation that Goody
(1986) associates with it (p. 597).
Like the previous sections, this one closes with a comparative
chapter, Cultural Constants and Variables. Trigger is struck, even
surprised, by the degree of similarity among his seven cases in the
realm of religion and symbolism. Although the particulars differ
greatly, he concludes:
There appears to have been only one major view of the operation of
the supernatural. Far from being an epiphenomenal reflection of culture as an adaptive system, this view appears to have been the convergent outcome of profound reflections on how class societies served
the practical needs of their members. In early civilizations, religion
was not only the main locus of symbolic production but also the principal medium for vital discussions and debates on political issues.
[p. 650]
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views of small-scale societies on the one hand, and with the later
transcendental religions on the other (p. 484). He suggests that
[c]ross-cultural uniformities in the religious beliefs of early civilizations resulted from analogous reflections on the taxation systems that
were generically common to all these societies. Sacrifice projected the
taxation system into the cosmic realm (p. 643).
Chapter 28 (Culture and Reason) contains the major conclusions and implications of Understanding Early Civilizations. Trigger
returns to the theoretical dichotomy with which he began (rationalism versus romanticism), noting the cyclical alternation of the
popularity of the two viewpoints over time. He argues for the fundamental importance of two very different forms of empirical pattern:
the unique and integrated configuration that characterizes each
human society, and the cross-cultural regularities that characterize
sets of societies (e.g., ancient states). The unique patterns of individual cultural traditions are celebrated by idealists and postmodernists,
and dismissed by modernists such as the New Archaeologists: [a]
powerful tendency, derived from functionalism, nevertheless persists
to dismiss cultural traditions as non-explanations of human behavior (p. 660; Trigger cites Lewis Binford here). Trigger argues for
the ecological importance of cultural traditions, citing Boyd and
Richersons (1985) dual inheritance model of sociocultural evolution,
and suggests the following:
This argument calls into question the notion that it is practical reason
that accounts for cross-cultural uniformities and cultural reason that
explains cross-cultural particularities. Ecological patterns are adaptive precisely because they are variable from one natural setting to
another. Other idiosyncratic cultural patterns persist not because stylistic traits are selectively neutral but because they are selected for
internal consistency in situations that relate to identity, cooperation,
and psychological well-being rather than to serve a cross-cultural goal.
[pp. 660661]
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also succeeded in placing his analysis, and the seven case studies,
firmly within the major theoretical debates of our time.
ADAM T. SMITHS THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
The concept of landscape has become ubiquitous in archaeology
today. Some archaeologists analyze historical landscapes, symbolic
landscapes, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes (Anschuetz et al.
2001:172181); others focus on clearly defined landscapes, organically
evolved landscapes, and associative cultural landscapes (Cleere
1995). For some, there are constructed landscapes, conceptualized
landscapes, and ideational landscapes (Knapp and Ashmore 1999:
1013). The L word can also come first: landscape as memory,
landscape as identity, landscape as social order, and landscape as
transformation (Knapp and Ashmore 1999:1319). All kinds of
archaeologists, from ecologists to phenomenologists to archaeoastronomers, are rushing to use the term in their work, or at least in the
titles of their works (here are just a few recent archaeology books with
landscape in the title: Alcock 2002; Ashmore and Knapp 1999;
Koontz et al. 2001; Ruggles et al. 2001; Scarborough 2003; Silverman
and Isbell 2002; Wilkinson 2003). It seems that for many archaeologists,
all the worlds a landscape, and for some, the term is poised to take
over as the dominant concept in archaeology (Anschuetz et al. 2001).
Some of us, however, remain less than enthusiastic about the grand
claims of the landscape movement in archaeology. In many cases,
landscape is a code word signaling an archaeologists adherence to
the social archaeology approach (Preucel and Meskell 2004). Other
archaeologists use the phrase landscape as a buzz wordit sounds
good in a title, but doesnt signal any change in ones theoretical
orientation, methods, or approach (I must admit to my own guilt
here; see M. E. Smith 1995). Finally, landscape continues to be used
as a technical term in geomorphology and geoarchaeology.
Is Adam T. Smiths book, The Political Landscape (2003), just
another rider on the landscape bandwagon? Fortunately, the answer
is an emphatic no. This is a major work of comparative archaeology, extremely well grounded in theory and data. It makes numerous important contributions to our understanding of early states, and
also places the study of those polities within the framework of contemporary political theory and philosophy. His argument is rich,
sophisticated, and nuanced, and it would take a longer essay than
the present one to comment on all aspects of this rewarding work.
Much of the thought is original and creative, and it is worth laying
out Smiths conceptual approach in some detail.
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This is not a book about landscape per se but rather a book about
political dynamics and organization. In Smiths view, polities
particularly ancient statescannot be understood without coming
to terms with ways their rulers use, shape, and create space and
spatial relationships, and landscape provides a concept for
approaching those relationships. Although Smith draws on the extensive social science spatiality literature (de Certeau 1984; Lefebvre
1991), his work does not fit comfortably with much of the work in
that genre. Compared with that approach, his book is at the same
time broader, in terms of anthropological and political theory, and
narrower, in terms of its focus on empirical archaeological and historical data. Smith is not trying to answer the grand questions of
society and space, but instead to use space (and landscape) to answer
some of the grand questions of the political dynamics in early states.
This strong focus on the political is what makes The Political Landscape such an important work. Although there are some quite highlevel discussions of theory and philosophy, the entire enterprise is
strongly problem oriented, never losing sight of the focus on early
states.
Adam Smith begins in Chapter 1 (Sublimated Spaces) with a
three-part classification of the ways archaeologists (and others)
have dealt with space in theory and practice: absolute space, subjective space, and relational space. Most of the chapter is concerned
with demonstrating the inadequacies of the first two concepts.
Much traditional archaeological research holds to an absolute view
of space:
Although social evolutionism is, above all, a theory of time, of
the shape, pace, and direction of history, its foundational conceit
that world history may be understood under the rubric of a unified
law of social changeis predicated on the reduction of space to a
social constant. That is, variations in space must be insulated from
affecting social transformations so that explanatory power may be
vested exclusively in the temporal axis. If space were to hold the
potential to shape the course of future transformations, then temporal
variation would be difficult to define in universal terms. Space, within
an evolutionary approach to social life, must be described as absolute.
[p. 34]
Smith isolates two types of absolute space as common in archaeological studies of early states, mechanical absolutism and organic
absolutism: The mechanical absolutist position holds that space
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Chapter 2, Archaeologies of Political Authority, focuses on concepts of the state and political authority. Smith is even harder on
those evolutionists who emphasize primary states than is Trigger:
As social evolutionist fantasy, the concept of primary states presents
the possibility of a handful of historical cases where externalities are
sufficiently well controlled such that conditions of study mimic the
laboratory, hence the hermetic connotations of the adjective pristine.
To assume such hermetic conditions falsely demarcates early complex
polities as islands, isolated from the less developed world around
them. [p. 83]
There are four substantive chapters, one for each of the four
topics listed above. Each chapter centers on a single detailed case
study that is discussed in terms of experience, perception, and
imagination. Chapter 3, Geopolitics, examines the nature of
relationships among polities in early states; the major example is
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2
To most anthropologists, the phrase cross-cultural refers to comparisons among distinct
cultures (Ember and Ember 2001; Fox and Gingrich 2002). A new definition of the phrase has
emerged in recent years, however, that refers not to comparisons of cultures, but to interactions
among people belonging to different cultures. This usage is now found in the fields of international business (Gannon and Newman 2002) and multicultural studies (Reynolds and
Valentine 2004), as well as among postmodern scholars in a number of disciplines (Guth
2003), including anthropology (Mutua and Swadener 2004). In the field of international
management, for example, the concept cross-cultural refers to three topics: research done in
the United States that is applied to other countries, research done in other countries, and
research on multicultural social groups (Gannon and Newman 2002:217). This is a prime
example of the problems caused by disciplinary isolation in the human sciences (Wallerstein
2003).
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Citation
Trigger 2003
Maisels 1999
Trigger 1993
Redman 1978
Service 1975
Adams 1966
A. T. Smith 2003
Raaflaub and Rosenstein, eds. 1999
Schwartz and Falconer, eds. 1994
Demarest and Conrad, eds. 1992
Yoffee and Cowgill, eds. 1988
Sabloff and Lamberg-Karlovsky,
eds. 1975
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REFERENCES CITED
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Tilley, Christopher
1994 A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments.
Oxford: Berg.
Tinniswood, Adrian
1998 Visions of Power: Ambition and Architecture from Ancient Rome to
Modern Paris. London: M. Beazley.
Trigger, Bruce G.
1972 Determinants of Urban Growth in Pre-Industrial Societies. In Man,
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Yoffee, Norman
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Yoffee, Norman, and George L. Cowgill, eds.
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