The Development of Centralized State Polities

Organizational cycling in chiefdoms may be the source of the institutional innovations that brought about the emergence of the first centralized states in a limited number of world regions (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus, central China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes). States, like chiefdoms, are centralized regional polities with intensive economies and hierarchical social organization. Unlike chiefdoms, which have only marginally differentiated political offices, states possess specialized offices and more complex constructions of power and status within elite and commoner strata (see Social Inequality, Development of). Most states are organized at a scale that transcends maximal kin groupings - they are civil societies where the state holds a putative monopoly over sanctioned internal and external expressions of force.

Processes of First-Generation State Formation

Conflict-oriented interpretations of state formation view the first states as paramount chiefdoms that successfully conquered at least one other paramount chiefdom and then developed a specialized powersharing structure to administer territories and populations on a scale that undifferentiated chiefly leadership could not monitor effectively. Because first-generation state formation involves a regional extrapolation of chiefly power, with administrative specialization following territorial expansion, conquest models seem consistent with the archaeological evidence as well as historical descriptions of state formation in some parts of the world. Cooperation-based approaches to state formation emphasize the role of economic intensification, specialized craft production, and regional trade networks, arguing that economic specialization could drive population growth and nucleation, creating the need for new offices and institutions to manage emerging urban centers and regional economies.

Institutional Features of Archaic States

Political complexity in archaic states is qualitatively different from chiefdoms and autonomous villages.

Chiefdoms form in societies that have kin - or community-based institutions (sodalities), but the power of the chiefly office is typically not derived from these institutions. Power in states is not simply vested individually in a horizon of competing elites, but is distributed in hierarchical offices representative of a number of central institutions whose powers, functions, and constituencies overlap to varying degrees. The ruling elite of an archaic state may hold the paramount titles for military, political, religious, and economic institutions - and may compete for these offices in a manner not unlike chiefly competition - but lower-order offices are inevitably staffed by a new stratum of intermediate elites that may include formerly hostile local elites and distinguished commoners (and, eventually, bureaucrats). States also have kin-based structures, but governmental power is concentrated in elite-dominated institutions.

States are socially stratified, and have a specialized division of labor that is visible in social hierarchies at the capital, as well as in a rural-urban continuum that becomes more accentuated through processes of urbanization. State political economies coordinate agropastoral production centrally, using tribute and taxes to intensify surpluses that can support a standing military and non-food-producing sectors of society (craft specialists, administrators). Storage of staples and direct elite access to and monopoly over exotic goods become important state priorities. A state religion is an important institution for promoting the state ideology and political economy, and the ruling elite invests in sponsoring religious activity, promoting the state cult, and managing the ritual calendar.

As civil societies, states also attempt to monopolize internal and external expressions of force. A judicial system and code of law replaces kin-based mechanisms of conflict resolution, regulating internal disputes; raiding and territorial conquests are achieved by state armies led by members of the ruling elite. While elites may occupy the upper echelons of the court system and army, lower-order positions (e. g., legal functionaries, record-keepers, and soldiers) are often staffed by commoners, whose ambition and ability permit a certain degree of social advancement.

Archaeological Features of Centralized States

Evidence for centralized state organization is strongest when multiple indicators are unambiguously identifiable at the regional level, at individual sites, as well as in special proveniences that do not exist in non-state societies. From a practical standpoint, this requires an archaeological database of considerable breadth, and much of the debate over archaic states arises over interpretive disagreements between researchers responsible for collecting different aspects of the total database.

At the regional level, military expansion and information exchange models presume a hierarchical settlement pattern that is indicative of regional political integration by a central government. For many archaeologists, a four-tier regional administrative hierarchy (although some use just site-size hierarchies) has been taken as strong evidence for a centralized state. It is easy for researchers to infer a four-tier hierarchy from small regional data sets or out of ambiguous settlement patterns; this criterion is most persuasive when combined with other lines of evidence for a qualitative regional reorganization of society compared to earlier time periods.

Excavations at the urban capitals of early states can provide the clearest evidence for state hierarchies and institutions - state capitals possess the fullest range of state infrastructure and the most obvious evidence for complex social hierarchy - but such sites are rarely accessible for horizontal excavation projects. Even when state capitals have not been buried under modern cities, the scale of urban archaeology requires massive investments of time and labor to develop material culture patterns related to life in the state capital. Excavations at lower-order administrative sites are critical for moving beyond monolithic, top-down views of the state and developing perspectives on how state administrative policies were (or were not) implemented locally. Rural food producers comprised the vast majority of the population of archaic states; archaeology can show how farmers and herders were affected by the changing fortunes of the state.

Archaeologists have suggested a number of other possible material correlates for state-level organization, including the presence of palatial residences, royal tombs, standardized temples, and morphologically distinct types of administrative buildings. Not all of these criteria represent qualitative developments - for example, palaces and royal tombs might not be significantly larger than elite residences and tombs in chiefdoms - so archaeologists should seek as many independent indicators as possible, attempting to identify both a qualitative social transformation (in a culture-historical sense) as well as archaeological features that are compatible with other known cases of state formation.