Sign-In
Cart
Understanding Early Large-Scale Collectives: A Global Perspective
Paperback
ArchaeologyGeneral World History
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781032856926
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Jun 30 2025
Pages: 430
Language: English
This volume brings together perspectives from different parts of the world that showcase the wide variety of practices, institutions, and ideologies that allowed for shared identities and coordinated actions across broad collectives. It shows that there are many ways that people can work together.
How did the world's first large-scale collectives come into being? For much of our discipline's history, the answer was the state. People learned how to be part of a larger community via political, economic, and social scaffolding that tended to build from earlier ways of living in a region. This scaffolding was often wobbly and always under construction--its flexibility often a design strength rather than a flaw. This book demonstrates that violence and rulers often played pivotal roles in large-scale collectives, but so did gender complementarity, markets, ritual centers, fictive kinship, and egalitarianism. Earlier evolutionary approaches tended to obscure both the variability and malleability of earlier political forms in a desire to find ideal types hidden beneath cross-cultural noise. This volume's authors argue that this noise was politics-in-action and that there was no state, or other kind of polity, that was above the fray and divorced from the daily practices that brought people, animals, and other things together.
A better understanding of early collective action strategies provides a richer understanding of past politics and, just as importantly, demonstrates governance alternatives for our contemporary society that struggles to address climate change, pandemics, and other pressing challenges. This book will interest archaeologists and historians, as well as anyone who is curious about other ways that we can work together to solve common problems.
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
Archaeology
The Death of Christ: The Bible and Popular Culture Vs Archaeological and Historical Evidence
Rutledge, Steven
Hardcover
Things We Found in the Ground: Discovering the History Buried Beneath Our Feet
Gray, Lucie
Bruce, Ellie
Paperback
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts
Langlands, Alexander
Paperback
Treasures of Egypt: A Legacy in Photographs from the Pyramids to Cleopatra
National Geographic
Hardcover
Archaeology and the People of the Bible: Exploring the Evidence for the Historical Existence of Bible Characters
Kennedy, Titus
Paperback
The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World
Wisnom, Selena
Hardcover
Those Who Walked Before: Fossil Footprints at White Sands
Bennett, Matthew
Bustos, David F.
Odess, Daniel
Paperback
Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed
Cline, Eric H.
Hardcover
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Anthony, David W.
Paperback
The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story
Mallory, J. P.
Hardcover
The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke
Lawler, Andrew
Paperback
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age
Hapgood, Charles
Paperback
Escape from Pompeii: The Great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Its Survivors
Tuck, Steven L.
Hardcover
American Archaeology: Living History, Stolen Pasts, and Defending the Future
Burillo, R. E.
Paperback
An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya
Taube, Karl
Miller, Mary Ellen
Paperback
The Earl and the Pharaoh: From the Real Downton Abbey to the Discovery of Tutankhamun
The Countess of Carnarvon
Paperback
The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved
Mithen, Steven
Hardcover
Slaving States: From West Africa to the Ancient Mediterranean
Fentress, Elizabeth
Rabinowitz, Adam
Hardcover
The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World
Wisnom, Selena
Paperback
A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief: The Island Civilization of Ancient Hawai'i
Kirch, Patrick Vinton
Paperback
The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery
Page, Jake
Adovasio, James
Paperback
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Anthony, David W.
Paperback
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution
Hicks, Dan
Paperback
Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest
Turner, Christy G., II
Paperback
Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age
Sheppard, Kathleen
Hardcover
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
Silberman, Neil Asher
Finkelstein, Israel
Paperback
Macedonia Under the Argead Kings: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower
Worthington, Ian
Hardcover
Turtle Island and the Tradition of Giants: When Earth Met Sky and Men Walked with Gods
Hamilton, Ross
Paperback
Paper Number 89: Coastal Archaeology of Suchitepéquez and Escuintla, Guatemala; Paper Number 90: Environment and Settlement in the Jesús River Drainag
Arroyo, Barbara
Pye, Mary Elizabeth
Paperback
Arrowheads and Stone Artifacts: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Archaeologist
Yeager, C. G.
Paperback
Behind the Bears Ears: Exploring the Cultural and Natural Histories of a Sacred Landscape
Burrillo, R. E.
Paperback
The Valkyries' Loom: The Archaeology of Cloth Production and Female Power in the North Atlantic
Smith, Michèle Hayeur
Paperback
Medieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns
Fransen, LILLI
Nørgård, Anna
ØStergård, Else
Paperback
An Archaeology of Milpa Cultures: Maize and Ecological Worldbuilding in Central Mexico
Alcántara, Keitlyn
Paperback
Classic Maya Social Inequality, Networks, and Collapse at DOS Pilas, Petén, Guatemala
Palka, Joel W.
Hardcover
The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World
Broodbank, Cyprian
Hardcover
Uncovering America's First War: Contact, Conflict, and Coronado's Expedition to the Rio Grande
Schmader, Matthew F.
Hardcover
The Bible's First Kings: Uncovering the Story of Saul, David, and Solomon
Farber, Zev I.
Faust, Avraham
Hardcover
The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World's Oldest Symbols
Von Petzinger, Genevieve
Paperback
Roman Maritime Villas: Rediscovering Architecture in Southern Latium and Its Wider Context
Ferritto, Roberta
Hardcover
The Trouble with Ancient DNA: Telling Stories of the Past with Genomic Science
Källén, Anna
Paperback
The Founding of Thessaloniki: A Comparison of Literary, Archaeological and Topographical Evidence
Manoledakis, Manolis
Paperback
Los Cuatro Cielos: Una Nueva Historia de Los Mayas / The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya
Stuart, David
Paperback
Flaked Stone Artifacts from the East Wenatchee Clovis Cache
Huckell, Bruce
Mehringer, Peter J., Jr.
Bradley, Bruce A.
Hardcover
Stones Still Speak: How Biblical Archaeology Illuminates the Stories You Thought You Knew
Haley, Amanda Hope
Paperback
Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon Revisited: The Published Versus the Unpublished Record
Reyman, Jonathan E.
Paperback
Talking to the Rain: Paintings and Carvings on Stone in Chihuahuan Desert Landscapes
Schaafsma, Polly
Hardcover
Silk Roads, Steppe Roads: History Unearthed from the Tombs of Medieval China
Skaff, Jonathan Karam
Hardcover
The Trouble with Ancient DNA: Telling Stories of the Past with Genomic Science
Källén, Anna
Hardcover
Capturing Water: Puebloan Resilience and Agricultural Sustainability in Chaco Canyon
Fladd, Samantha G.
Vivian, R. Gwinn
Hardcover
Joining the Dots: uniting Salisbury's past through holes in the ground
Mepham, Lorraine
Harding, Phil
Higbee, Lorrain
Hardcover
Guardians of the Dragon Path: Ancient Temples of the Pyrenees, the Way of the Stars Camino, A Magdalena Meridian
Williams, Ani
Paperback
Sins of the Shovel: Looting, Murder, and the Evolution of American Archaeology
Morgan, Rachel
Paperback
Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge
Carnes-McNaughton, Linda F.
Wilde-Ramsing, Mark U.
Paperback
Administrative Reality and Scribal Apparatus in the Middle Babylonian Period, with Accompanying Texts
Tenney, Jonathan S.
Hardcover
Petroglyphs (Rock Carvings) in the Susquehanna River near Safe Harbor, Pennsylvania
Cadzow, Donald
Paperback
Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State
Williams, David B.
Nesbitt, Elizabeth A.
Paperback
Forbidden Archeologist: The Atlantis Rising Magazine Columns of Michael A. Cremo
Cremo, Michael A.
Hardcover
Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean
Barber, E. J. W.
Paperback