Emergent Complexity
The Evolution of Intermediate Societies
1st Edition
Published on 1. March 1996
Book
Hardback
126 pages
978-1-879621-21-3 (ISBN)
Description
Serious interest in the evolution and dynamics of intermediate societies has grown by leaps and bounds during the past decade. The purpose of this volume is to suggest new ways to model the many stimuli and processes by which cultural complexity emerges, emphasizing major organizational changes, not the appearance and disappearance of specific traits. All contributors share the view that it is time to fundamentally reconsider a variety of ideas about the emergence of complex organization. Their chapters present data from a broad range of case studies, including the Northwest Coast and British Columbia Plateau, California, the Plains, the Mississippian Southeast, the American Southwest, Spain, and Northern Europe.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ann Arbor
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Library binding
Illustrations
Bibliography; Index; Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 287 mm
Width: 220 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
610 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-879621-21-3 (9781879621213)
DOI
10.3167/9781879621213
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jeanne E. Arnold is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published extensively on the history of the American Pacific Coast, focusing on Native American community and household organization, specialized labor and occupations, and the emergence of hierarchical socioeconomic and political relationships in traditional societies.
Content
Contents: Jeanne E. Arnold, Understanding the Evolution of Intermediate Societies; John M. O'Shea and Alex W. Barker, Measuring Social Complexity and Variation: A Categorical Imperative?; Robert D. Drennan, One for All and All for One: Accounting for Variability without Losing Sight of Regularities in the Development of Complex Society; Robert W. Chapman, Problems of Scale in the Emergence of Complexity; Brian Hayden, Thresholds of Power in Emergent Complex Societies; Jeanne E. Arnold, Organizational Transformations: Power and Labor among Complex Hunter-Gatherers and Other Intermediate Societies; Gary Coupland, This Old House: Cultural Complexity and Household Stability on the Northern Northwest Coast of North America; Winifred Creamer, Developing Complexity in the American Southwest: Constructing a Model for the Rio Grande Valley; James N. Hill, W. Nicholas Trierweiler and Robert W. Preucel, The Evolution of Cultural Complexity: A Case from the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico