ANTH 622 Seminar:Early States and Empires
Early forms of urbanism, the state and the first prehistoric empires. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources on ranked societies in the Americas, Africa, Asia,Europe and Oceania are examined. These sources are then expanded to include the archeological documentation of complex societies. The course focuses on changes in settlement patterns, social organization, the establishment of political office, and on the evolution of primitive economic and ideological systems that help define early development and the demise of chiefdoms of centralized bureaucratic states and empires.