ANTH 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Nuclear Family, Signify, Patrilocal Residence
Document Summary
Chapter 11: reconstructing social and political systems of the past. Creation of larger organizations across the landscape (alliances, empires) Physical structures (house types, etc. ) may be clues to these unconscious mental rules. Roles (behavior patterns prescribed for these positions) Formal and informal "rules" regulating people"s collective acts (who holds/wields power?) Non-residential groups (e. g. several levels of chiefs) Regional entities, usually consisting of 2 or more relatively permanent settlements under a single chief (unlike a mobile band or tribe). A chiefdom is a ranked society (your position is determined by the closeness of your family to the chief"s family in terms of kinship). Identifying archaeological artifacts as "male" or "female" is difficult (too much ethnographic variation). Major structuring principle, but it leaves confusing archaeological traces. Ancient political systems may have no modern counterparts (so there are. Trade goods from afar demonstrate interactions between groups. Artifacts as things help explain past behavior, with the aid of connecting middle-level.
