Throughout the world, the development of agriculture produced dramatic changes in human cultural systems. As people settled down in one locality, populations grew rapidly, patterns of subsistence were transformed, technology became more advanced, and the nature of social and political relations changed. People no longer interacted exclusively with kin, as they had in the past when organized in bands, and new forms of political relationships between roups were established. The emergence these political systems was the first P in the evolution of the state. The contributors to this collection rely archaeological and ethnographic case dies to examine the social, economic political processes behind the elopment of these" middle-range" tical systems, located on a continuum between communally organized hunter-gatherer bands and stratified, centralized chiefdoms and states.