| This study suggests that evolutionary typologies currently employed by archaeologists are of limited utility for understanding the process of sociopolitical change. Using archaeological data, this work is an attempt to outline an alternative approach for examining sociopolitical development among societies of varying complexity. In examining the process of sociopolitical change, I am concerned primarily with the feedback cycle associated with the development and achievement of leadership positions. A cross-cultural review of recent political anthropological studies is presented and suggests that a positive feedback relationship exists between the following variables: (1) leadership development, (2) population growth, (3) subsistence intensification, and (4) increased intra- and intergroup exchange. Competition on both local and regional levels is viewed as a critical factor in determining why sociopolitical change often occurs at a rapid rate once this feedback cycle is set in motion. Those groups having strong leaders, large population bases, and extensive sociopolitical ties may have a competitive advantage over smaller, less politically integrated groups in the competition for available goods, land, and mates in the local region. The long-term implication of this process is that those groups that lack some form of managerial organization would not survive direct competition with larger, better integrated political systems.;The above theoretical approach provides the basis for generating a model of prehistoric change in the Little Colorado region, east-central Arizona. This sociopolitical model is developed as an alternative to a widely used environmental model that endeavors to explain major subsistence/settlement change through shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns. Both models are evaluated using information from regional surface surveys and excavated sites. The results of the analysis suggest that permanent, sedentary villages and one-level decision-making hierarchies developed by A.D. 700. Large villages were the centers of influential decision makers who apparently initiated strategies of increased surplus accumulation, greater regional exchange, and population recruitment. By A.D. 1100 this feedback cycle accelerated due to increasing land scarcity, the development of the Chacoan Interaction sphere, and a major environmental shift. Those leaders situated along permanent sources of water were able to considerably increase their status and political power by initiating large-scale irrigation projects and by recruiting people from outlying communities. At this time, there is evidence of two-level decision-making hierarchies evolving along permanent sources of water in the study area. While environmental shifts may have accelerated this process of change, a more important factor appears to have been the evolution and expansion of managerial organizations between A.D. 700 and 1400.;A major point of this study is that measures of population parameters, subsistence intensification, regional exchange, organizational complexity, and competition can be constructed using archaeological data, and that these provide a set of continuous variables for examining long-term sociopolitical development. A method is presented for measuring prehistoric political change among both simple and complex societies. The method is based on the analysis of regional settlement patterns, and the spatial distribution of architectural features and various types of goods. |
