Ch 15- Social and Political Systems of the Past Flashcards
What are the three components in any human society that are important in social organization?
- Gender
- Kinship
- Social status
Trade
- Importance to social organization?
- Important component of political and social systems
- Political organization: a society’s formal and informal institutions that regulate a population’s collective act
What is a Chiefdom?
- Regional polity in which two or more local groups are organized under a single chief who has some power over land, resources and people
Who Holds Political Control?
- Residential group or non-residential group?
- Chiefdom
Archaeology and Gender
Gender Roles
“Differential participation of males and females in various social, economic, political and religious institutions within a society”
Archaeology and Gender
Gender Ideology
“Culturally specific meanings assigned to terms like male/female, husband/wife, marriage”
Can we reconstruct what men and women did in the past?
- Ethnographic data can provide ideas but have limitations
- Skeletal analysis show if the sexes participated in similar or different activities, but not which ones
- Stable isotope analysis tells us if they had similar or different diets
Archaeology and Kinship
Kinship
“Socially recognized network of relationships through which individuals are related to one another by ties of descent (real or fictive – can be equally powerful) and marriage”
Three Basic Forms of Kinship
1. Bilateral descent
“Trace relatives equally though mother’s and father’s sides”
- Nuclear family is important economic unit and often a lack of depth in knowing about kin more than 3 generations back
Three Basic Forms of Kinship
2. Patrilineal descent
“Trace relatives through father’s side”
• Most important group in patrilineage
• 60% of world’s known societies
Three Basic Forms of Kinship
3. Matrilineal descent
“Trace relatives through mother’s side”
- Most important group is matrilineage
- 10% of world’s known societies
Melvin and Carol Ember
What did the find in relation to matrilocal societies?
- Clusters of female relatives in habit one large house – males move to the house upon marriage
• Main economic unit
• Ex. Iroquois longhouse
• Maybe related to long distance warfare wherein men are gone for long periods of time and may not come back
Archaeology and Social Status
- Status
“Rights, duties, privileges and powers associated with a certain social position”
- Gender and age very important
Egalitarian Societies
- Who has authority
- How is leadership attained
- How many positions available
- No fixed number of positions of status
- No one has complete authority over another; authority is restricted to certain situations and is temporary
- Key to leadership is experience and social standing – not inheritance
- Everyone has roughly equal access to life-sustaining resources
Ranked Societies
- How many positions
- How is leadership attained
- Limit the positions of valued status
- Hierarchy in which relatively permanent social stations are maintained
- Unequal access to life-sustaining resources
- Can have inherited status
