[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This stimulating edited volume of thirteen papers examines the diverse forms and expressions of political organization in pre-modern societies worldwide. Among its primary motivations is to continue moving beyond neo-evolutionary models and the “narrow typological categories” that have “conceptual and empirical limits, or even inadequacies, in encapsulating the wealth and diversity of early political organizations” (p. 1). The title sets the stage by offering a twist on the classic sociopolitical progression (egalitarian bands to states) in which house societies, an alternative political type that has gained increasing attention in recent years,[1] replaces egalitarian bands. In doing so, Moreno García signals that “from . . . to . . .” recognizes the diverse forms of political organization rather than successive stages of development.
The diversity of political organization is demonstrated in the volume’s collection of papers which considers a variety of periods and regions from prehistory to the Middle Ages. As the series editors, Miniaci and Moreno García, observe in the Preface, “particular institutions and social features (‘market’, ‘temple’, ‘rational behavior’, ‘law’) were . . . idiosyncratic of particular societies, regions, and times” (p. ix). They contend that cross-cultural approaches are therefore necessary to reveal these idiosyncrasies in political organization; and, that this is only possible with greater collaboration across disciplinary traditions (e.g., Egyptology, Assyriology, Classical Studies, Sinology), hence the volume’s broad scope with contributions from historians, archaeologists, and other scholars working in five of the world’s inhabited continents (Australia is not represented).
The format is typical of many edited volumes: it includes a Preface, Introduction, and several papers (12). The papers are presented in chronological order; each is relatively concise (20—30 pages, including bibliography) and offers a unique case study highlighting a different expression or development of known models/categories of political organization. Although not aimed at a popular audience, the contributions are approachable to most advanced graduate students or scholars in archaeology and anthropology and do not require any prior familiarity with the region or period.
This review concentrates on the essays that may be of particular interest to BMCR readerships (Classical Studies and related) and/or that help to illustrate further the diversity of political organization examined in the volume.
The Introduction provides a fitting opening to the volume by effectively outlining its motivations and justifying its broad coverage. Moreno García begins the chapter with a discussion of the state and the “disproportionate” attention that it has received in discussions of political organization. The inadequacy of the classic state model (i.e., its form in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia) and the existence of other typologies and categorizations of political organization has recently come into much focus, Moreno García argues, alongside the “diminished role of the west in a gradually multipolar world” (p. 3). To illustrate this, he highlights several examples of groups with political organizations that are clear variations on, or unique expressions of, the state, such as more mobile populations. A strength of this section is the variety of supporting examples, none of which are included in the case studies elsewhere in the volume (e.g., Late Iron Age Khorezm). Disappointing is the lack of attention given to house societies in this discussion; no definition is provided even though house societies are mentioned more than half of the papers in the volume.
The first case study (Chapter 2) is an examination of the tripartite house (featuring a large central room, hall, or area with two sets of flanking rooms, halls, or areas) from the fifth to third millennia BCE and its development alongside the formation of the city-state in Mesopotamia. Butterlin begins by devoting considerable attention to previous approaches to the development of the city-state in this region, particularly those approaches that follow neoevolutionary paradigms. He argues that the tripartite house played an important role as “the cradle of social experiments, driving change from a classical household model to complex architectural formulae” (p. 38). Butterlin then traces the development and different expressions of the tripartite plan alongside the lengthy “proto-urban” period of Mesopotamia that, he suggests, developed in several cycles.
Moreno García’s second contribution to the volume, his chapter on houses, regions, and the state in pharaonic Egypt, is by far the longest (42 pages); its length reflects the complexity and historical range of the evidence that he marshals. The contribution opens, like the volume’s Introduction, by critiquing the role of the West in creating widespread notions of statehood and political development, but it goes on to apply the critique more narrowly to scholarship in Egyptology. In short, the predominate narratives of the 19th and 20th centuries favor monolithic, centralized, and hierarchical models centered on the pharaoh and thought to apply broadly across the regions. Citing numerous archaeological and textual examples, Moreno García attributes much more agency to individual houses and underscores the diversity among settlements, institutions, and regions, such that power was constructed as “a confluence of different spheres of authority, more or less (formally) controlled by the king and organized on several levels” (p. 89). In other words, pharaonic Egypt was far less homogenous across time and space than generally recognized.
In the subsequent chapter, Nakassis begins by highlighting the two established and quite different views of Mycenaean sociopolitical structures: 1) a society hierarchically organized almost entirely within the context of the palatial system and 2) a network of (typically elite) agents and institutions. He suggests that the house society models may help to move beyond this distinction (importance of the state vs. individual actors) and that social units that “resemble the house” as described in the house society model (p. 135) may have had an important role in Mycenaean society. The large building complexes and chamber tomb cemeteries at Mycenae could be interpreted as reflections of house-like social group while the broad networks of collectors mentioned in the Linear B documents may have been reliant on households or alliances among households that “cut across the boundaries of independent polities” (p. 134).
Manzanilla also adopts the house society model but demonstrates its application to a settlement, Teotihuacan, characterized by a more corporate organization than Mycenaean Greece or any of the other preceding case studies. Manzanilla’s main argument is that Teotihuacan’s ethnic neighborhoods should be considered to have played the same role in the society as the houses in the house society model; this is expressed in the economic, social and symbolic aspects of the neighborhoods. Each neighborhood was relatively autonomous, individually recognized within the community, and able to acquire wealth and raw materials while making alliances with other neighborhoods.
Like many of the contributions, Escalona’s chapter begins by highlighting the tension between the established views of political organization of his study period—in this case, Medieval Europe—and newer developments in the discipline. For the Medieval era, a common, established view that it was largely state-less has since been challenged by assessments that emphasize continuity from the Roman period into the Middle Ages and the political sophistication of the Carolingian kingdom. With a primarily historical approach, Escalona focuses on Mercia and Castile. Despite the many differences between these two case studies, Escalona argues that the political processes underlying each are similar and both align with secondary state formation models.
Whereas all other case studies examined primarily sedentary groups, the final contribution in the volume considers a mobile population, the “sea people” of southeast Asia, with a longterm perspective (ca. first millennium to nineteenth century CE). Here, Bellina questions “Western-derived political models,” such as the classic model of the state, and their application to ancient southeast Asia (p. 280). The fragmented and diverse nature of the landscape led to similarly fragmented networks and interpersonal relationships that impacted the political and social organizations of the region’s various groups. Bellina shows that the sea people, who specialized in the exchange of maritime resources, were important actors in regional systems and developed their economic and social structures in parallel with, but separate from, other redistribution centers, networks, and groups, such as forestry collectors. In this context, the traditional western state model is inadequate to describe the various specializations, roles, and networks among groups occupying the same general regions.
As exemplified by these summaries, the volume achieves its goal by demonstrating much diversity in political organization, even among ostensibly similar models or typologies of political organization, such as the house society model and its use for both networked (Mycenaean) and corporate societies (Teotihuacan). This is reinforced by similar diversity in the methods and sources of evidence used for the examination: historical, archaeological, linguistic, etc. Due to the nature of the evidence (especially for prehistoric examples), archaeological approaches are most common.
While the individual papers certainly stand on their own, maximum effect is achieved when the volume is read as a single collection. With this, the variability among state and house societies in particular is on full display. For this reason, it was slightly disappointing to find no explicit dialogue among the papers in the text—especially because something to this effect is a goal of the book’s series. Alternatively, a concluding chapter or some other method to unite all the papers could have provided additional structure to the volume. Still, this does not detract from an otherwise successful and engaging edited volume that will appeal to any archaeologist or scholar interested in ancient political organization.
Authors and Titles
Preface (Gianluca Miniaci and Juan Carlos Moreno García)
- From House Societies to States: An introduction (Juan Carlos Moreno García)
- The great houses of Mesopotamia: Tripartite houses and the formation of the city-state (Pascal Butterlin)
- Egalitarianism, hierarchy, heterarchy, and homoarchy: What evidence for the Indus Valley civilization? (Massimo Vidale)
- Houses, regions, and state(s): Multiple political experiences in pharaonic Egypt (Juan Carlos Moreno García)
- Communities, ‘houses,’ and political organization in the Mycenaean world (Dimitri Nakassis)
- The emergence and legitimation of princely authority in the Early Bronze Age of central Germany (Harald Meller)
- Neighborhoods as ‘house societies’ in ancient Teotihuacan, central Mexico: Exclusionary organisations in a corporate social and political environment (Linda R. Manzanilla)
- House societies and the Classic Maya: An epigraphic view (James L. Fitzsimmons)
- Gathering Salinar houses: Platforms-as-assemblages in ancient coastal Peru (David Chicoine and Jacob Warner)
- Communities, urbanism, and state building in the Lake Chad region (Carlos Magnavita and Scott MacEachern)
- Negotiating visions of the house in West Africa: From dispersed agricultural communities to alternative complexities to the state (Stephen A. Dueppen)
- Early medieval state formation: A view from two peripheries (Julio Escalona)
- Trading polities and the ‘sea people’ of maritime Southeast Asia (Bérénice Bellina)
Notes
[1] In brief, house societies are characterized by the importance of physical house as focal points and loci of identity for corporate social groups. For application of the house society model in the Classical world, see, for instance, Corien W. Wiersma, House (Centric) Societies on the Prehistoric Greek Mainland, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 39(2), 2020, pp. 141–158.