Primer on Chiefs and Chiefdoms

Timothy Earle is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. He has conducted major archaeological field projects in Hawaii, Peru, Argentina, Denmark and Hungary; he believes that anthropological archaeology is a potent tool for investigating history in ways directly relevant to the modern world. His books on political economy include How Chiefs Come to Power and Bronze Age Economics.

• Chapter 1. Chiefdom Ethnographies of Power and IdentityChapter 2. Evolutionary Theory Integrating AnthropologyChapter 3. Chiefdoms and Sociocultural EvolutionChapter 4. Ritual Mode of Production Based on Religious IdeologyChapter 5. Corporate Mode of Production and Defense of LandChapter 6. Asiatic Mode of Production: Engineered LandscapesChapter 7. Predatory Mode of Production and Wealth FinanceChapter 8. Models for Archaeological Research on ChiefdomsProjectReferencesSuggested Readings

Earle expertly summarizes a career's worth of knowledge on the political and economic underpinnings of early complex societies. . . . as a primer on current social evolutionary thinking it is a highly accessible volume for interested scholars working in California, North America, and beyond. --Mikael Fauvelle, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology | Vol. 41, No. 2 (2021)Given the scope and depth of Earle's work, this book can justifiably be described as a tour de force . . . Earle's comprehensive and well-researched work should be considered essential reading for those interested in understanding the processes that resulted in the advent of chiefdoms around the world."                          --Richard J. Chacon, Winthrop University, Latin American Antiquity, vol. 32, no. 4, 2021