Abstract
I examine social dynamics of prestate societies of the North Central European Plain, 500–1000 CE. My analysis concerns the archaeological data on spatial distribution and hierarchy of settlements, emergence of defensive settlements, distinction in social statuses and concentration of power, indirect evidence on collective action, and warfare. The key method employed is to analyse the density of networks of social interdependence. The data suggest that the 500-year period comprised four phases of social change of various duration and intensity. I focus on the characteristics of authority that range from participatory polycentric to centralized decision-making scheme, and introduce a new concept of authority that refers to intersecting levels of governance. It is presented as a conceptualization that affairs of social complexities are governed by a bifurcated arrangement: the centralized and structured government system, and a multicentric system of diverse types of collectivities that constitute a complementary source of authority with actors that cooperate, or sometimes compete, but constantly interact with each other.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Neologism used by Rosenau and Czempiel (1992).
- 2.
I purposely do not use written sources to mitigate confirmation bias and to test the potential of the archaeological record.
- 3.
Analytical unit used here to identify small, goal-oriented, cooperating community. See Wenger (1998).
- 4.
The reasons and historic context for this displacement is not significant for my reasoning. In older European literature the movements of people in the 500s and early 600s CE are referred to collectively as the Great Migrations Period, Völkerwanderung in German literature. Simply put, at time of hardship people modify their strategic repertoire to manage risk by simplifying their culture and moving (migrating) from economically and politically unstable regions. The ultimate goal is survival and not political gains.
- 5.
Transient functional political scheme of governance is difficult to notice archaeologically, but it might be identified through the analytical approach presented in this paper.
- 6.
I presented this concept in a paper “Sphere of authority as an analytical unit to assess levels of political (dis)integration” presented at the World Congress on State Origins and Related Subjects, Wigry, Poland, September 2014. The publication of the conference proceedings is forthcoming.
- 7.
This province also leads in the number of sites with status markers. It was the core of the TSA.
- 8.
I do not attempt any epigenetic analysis of the people who inhabited the NCEP between 500 and 1000 CE. The generic term “Slavs” used to label ethnic groups presently living in southern, central, and eastern Europe and speaking Slavic languages has little historic sense for the time period discussed in this study and is similar in its explanatory value to such meaningless labels as “bushmen” to identify culturally and linguistically diverse foraging groups in southern Africa, or “Indians” to label different native societies of the Americas.
- 9.
- 10.
The basic condition for human interaction in less complex societies; balanced rather than generalized, cf. Sahlins (1972: 193–195).
- 11.
Witnessed by Pospisil among the Kapauku of New Guinea, cf. Pospisil (1963: 49).
- 12.
For instance the Ojibwa chiefs, who have been labeled as leader by the European traders and later accepted as such by their peers, cf. Hallowell and Brown (1992).
- 13.
Elaborate burials of the Alt Käbelich type, cf. Dulinicz (2001: 8–9).
- 14.
See Carneiro (2012).
References
Barford, P. 2001. The early Slavs. Culture and society in early medieval Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Buczek, K. 2006. Studia z dziejow ustroju spoleczno-gospodarczego Polski Piastowskiej, vol. 2. Warsaw.
Carneiro, R. 1981. The chiefdom as precursor of state. In The transition to statehood in the new world, edited by G. Jones and R. Kautz, 39–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carneiro, R. 2012. The Circumscription Theory: A Clarification, Amplification, and Reformulation, Social Evolution & History 11(2):5–30.
Diamond, J. 2005. Collapse. How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking.
Dulinicz, M. 2001. Kształtowanie się Słowiańszczyzny Północno-Zachodniej. Studium Archeologiczne. Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk.
Dulinicz, M. 2006. Frühe Slawen im Gebiet zwischen unterer Weichsel und Elbe. Eine archäologische Studie (Studien zur Siedlungsgeschichte und Archäologie der Ostseegebiete 7), Neumünster.
Dunbar, R.I.M. 1992. Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution 22: 469–493.
Earle, T. 1987. Chiefdoms in archaeological and ethnohistorical perspectives. Annual Review of Anthropology 16: 279–308.
Ehrenrich, R., C. Crumley, and J.E. Levy, ed. 1995. Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies. American Anthropological Association, Archaeological Papers, 6. Washington, DC.
Gladwell, M. 2000. The tipping point—how little things make a big difference. New York: Little, Brown and Co.
Hallowell, A.I., and J.S. Brown. 1992. The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
Herrmann, J. ed. 1985. Die Slawen in Deutschland. Geschichte und Kultur der slawischen Stämme westlich von Oder und Neiße vom 6. Bis 12. Jahrhundert. Ein Handbuch. Neubearbeitung.
Johnson, G.A. 1983. Decision-making organization and pastoral nomad camp size. Human Ecology 11: 175–199.
Kradin, N.N. 2011. Heterarchy and hierarchy among ancient Mongolian nomads. Social Evolution & History 10: 120–141.
Lozny, L.R. 2011. The Emergence of Multi-agent Polities of the Northern Central European Plains in the Early Middle Ages, 600–900 CE. Social Evolution and History 10: 12–38.
Lozny, L.R. 2013. Prestate societies of the North Central European Plains, 600–900 CE. Springer Briefs in Human Ecology. New York: Springer.
McCarty, C., P.D. Killworth, H.R. Bernard, E. Johnsen, and G. Shelley. 2000. Comparing two methods for estimating network size. Human Organization 60: 28–39.
Modzelewski, K. 2000. Organizacja gospodarcza panstwa piastowskiego X–XIII wiek, Poznań.
Pospisil, L. 1963. The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Rosenau, J.N., and E.O. Czempiel. 1992. Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sahlins, M. 1972. Stone Age Economies. Chicago: Aldine.
Tainter, J. A. 1988. The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tainter, J.A. 2006. Social complexity and sustainability. Ecological Complexity 3: 91–103.
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lozny, L.R. (2017). Societal Dynamics of Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains, 500–1000 CE: A Model. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48401-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48402-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)