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Chapter 1 Introduction A Mississippian Leviathan [A]mongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and abler to govern the Publique, better than the rest; and these strive to reforme and innovate, one this way, another that way; and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.... [I]t is no wonder if there be somewhat else required (besides Covenant) ... which is a Common Power, to keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to the Common Benefit.... The only way to erect such a Common Power ... is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills . . . unto one Will. ... This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN ... (Hobbes 1985 [1651]:226-227). How was a "Common Power" erected among the ungoverned public? Why did people who lived free of ascribed hierarchy submit themselves to "that great Leviathan"? This problem lies at the heart of the social sciences. Indeed, understanding world-historical development demands tracing the history of authority and power and the origins of social stratification and political hegemonies. Archaeology is ideally situated to provide the empirical evidence needed to understand world-historical development and to comprehend the "Generation" of that great Leviathan. Leviathans of the past remain buried in Greater Mesopotamia, Central Mexico, South and Central America, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Far East, Southeast Asia, the islands of the Pacific, and southeastern North America. The generation of the Leviathan, that process ofcommon surrender , is not necessarily synonymous with the coalescence of archaic states. It is, I submit, to be found in the centralization of political authority before or in the absence of the state. Social classes and the emergence of the sovereign had their beginnings in the prestate or nonstate transformations of simple ranked groups into regionally centralized polities. Anthropologists most recently have called these elaborate regionally centralized polities "complex chiefdoms" (see Earle 1978; Steponaitis 1978; Wright 1984). In the past, similar formations also have been termed 2 Introduction: A Mississippian Leviathan "ranked societies" (e.g., Peebles and Kus 1977; Renfrew 1982), "segmentary states" (Southall 1956:246-249), "sacral chiefships" (Southall 1956:245), "sacred" or "divine kingships" (Frazer 1947:83-106; see Sahlins 1985:34), "paramountcies" (Taylor 1975), "regal" and "aristocratic kingdoms " (Vansina 1962:332-333) or, simply, "chiefdoms" (Oberg 1955:484; Mitchell 1956:47ff.; Southall 1956:vii). Some of Friedman and Rowlands's (1978:216-222) "Asiatic states," a term derived from Marx's Asiatic mode of production (see Bailey 1981; Gledhill 1984;Wolf 1982:79-88), are similar chiefly political formations, as are cases of Morgan's (1974 [1877]:264) and Childe's (1954:69ff.) "Upper" or "Higher" stages of "Barbarism" and Weber's (1968:231ff.) "patrimonialism." The common recognition of some form of nonstate polity based on sacral authority, a nonbureaucratized administrative hierarchy, and a tributary mode of production amidst disparate historical contexts provides a starting point for inquiry. This is not to say that the societal typespecifically "chiefdom"-shouldbe conceptualized as a stage ofevolution or that its utility lies anywhere except in the definition of a research problem (see Cordy 1981:25-29; Earle 1987a:280-281, 1991a; Feinman and Neitzel 1984; Flannery 1983:1; Kohl 1984; Muller 1987:10; Renfrew 1982:2; Steponaitis 1981:321; Wright 1977:381, 1984:43; d. Spencer 1990:2-4). Only by focusing on the process of nonstate political centralization and not on typology will we be able to comprehend the Leviathan. Nonstate political centralization entails concern with economy and societybut not as abstractions that may be studied separate from polity. Of course, politics abstractly conceived are not amenable to ratiocination (see Jacobitti 1986:74). On the contrary, the order of politics is disorder. Politics are pragmatic in character, involving the actions of individuals in the reproduction of "power" relations, where power is defined as the ability of an actor to achieve or control an outcome regardless of the conflicting actions of others (Giddens 1979:88; Weber 1968:53; d. Wolf 1990:586). Politics are, however, rooted in cultural traditions (Rosenberg 1988:98). Understanding political actions within chiefly traditions, contexts alien to the modern world, requires recognizing that actors conducted themselves in accord with their own traditional values, beliefs, and meanings. It is equally significant to the present study that such cultural traditions be understood not as unitary phenomena but as disparate and malleable sets of ideologies or ethics, values, and ways of understanding experience defined at the level of the...

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