Carballo - Cooperation & collective action: archaeological perspectives

Archaeological Perspectives

EDITED BY DAVID M. CARBALLO

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO
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2013 by University Press of Colorado

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cooperation and collective action : archaeological perspectives / edited by David M. Carballo.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60732-197-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-60732-208-5 (ebook) (print)
1. Commerce, Prehistoric. 2. Commerce, PrehistoricCross-cultural studies. 3. Economic
anthropology. 4. Economic anthropologyCross-cultural studies. I. Carballo, David M.,
editor of compilation.
GN799.C45C67 2012
306.3dc23

2012038942

Design by Daniel Pratt

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Schematic representations of cooperation and other dimensions of group behavior

Relationship between number of potential interactions and community size

Relationship between number of types of political officials and the population of the largest organizational unit

Curvilinear relationship between scale and complexity

Scatterplot of use group population and high-level and low-level integrative facilities

Scatterplot of use group population and size of small integrative structures

Time from the establishment of the first sedentary agricultural communities to the presence of large villages

Two patterns of village growth from the establishment of the first sedentary agricultural communities to the presence of large villages

Relationship between population size and increasing complexity for collective and autocratic organization

Comparative cases discussed in text

Archaeological sites or nearby towns mentioned in text

Map of study area, centering on the Owens Valley and showing regional obsidian sources and surrounding geographic features

Density of seeds per liter of soil from house floor assemblages in the Owens Valley

Obsidian geochemical diversity in households over time in the southern Owens Valley

Distribution of microflakes of obsidian and carbon isotope ratios across two house floors

The Kolomoki site and the locations of Blocks A and D

Close-up of the pit structure in Block A

Close-up of the structure in Block D

Regional settlement patterns during the Late Gavn phase (AD 5501000)

Map of El Gavn

Western Venezuelan llanos and adjacent Andes

Rafael Gassns map of El Cedral

Area B excavation on the circumscribing oval earthwork at B12

Drawing of the southwest profile of Mound A at B12

Map of Maya area with sites mentioned in text

Flow chart of Smith and Choi patron-client simulation dynamics

Central Mexico with sites and regions discussed in text

Simplified map of central Teotihuacan

Ceremonial centers of three Late Formative sites

Three core dimensions of human social groups

Organizational thresholds of human groups

Effects of population range on population-complexity correlations

Relationship between maximal community size and scale of organizational complexity

Relationship between total population size and organizational complexity

Range of settlement population sizes in egalitarian societies

Relationship between number of administrative levels and maximal community size

Population distribution, community size, and the emergence of Big Men

The coded societies, indicating values for Collective Action Total

Relative frequencies of surface treatments in assemblages of identifiable Woodland pottery from Blocks A and D

Relative frequencies of vessel forms identified in MNV analysis of Blocks A and D

Per-period payoff structure for Smith and Chois patron-client simulation

Caste occupations in the Indian subcontinent and in West Africa

Human behavior: basic principles

Perspectives on the preindustrial past

DAVID M. CARBALLO

Humans are excellent but strategically contingent cooperators. How we cooperate and the boundaries of our cooperative relations are two of the most important organizing principles for social groups. Not surprisingly, the cultural and evolutionary dynamics of cooperation represent a fertile topic of research in social and behavioral sciences such as anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology (self-or kin-interests despite all of the potential obstacles those interests present to group-oriented behaviors? What are the costs and benefits to individuals across the socioeconomic spectrum in participating in, or defecting from, cooperative endeavors? What suite of mechanisms for encouraging and maintaining cooperation exists within any particular society, and how does its composition evolve over time as a result of cumulative goal seeking by individuals and larger-scale environmental processes? Why does cooperation sometimes break down completely?

Archaeologists have been investigating the developmental trajectories of cooperation and competition in past societies for decades, but have tended to emphasize the latter in seeking to explain those processes underlying cultural evolution. As a result, bottom-up possibilities for group cooperation (or self-organization) have been undertheorized in favor of political models stressing top-down leadership, often invoking compliance through coercion. In the meantime, evidence from a range of disciplines has demonstrated humans effectively sustain cooperative undertakings through a number of social norms and institutions that are applicable to archaeology on multiple analytical scales, including reciprocal exchanges, monitoring the reputation of others, and the retribution or rewarding of transgression or compliance. This important axis of variability in the dynamics of past human societies has received scant attention in archaeological theory, with notable exceptions discussed later in this chapter.

A focus on the interplay between cooperation and competition in past societies necessitates multiscalar approaches that consider the complete spectrum of human behavior, from the broad evolutionary processes instigated by aggregate individual actions, to the motivations for those actions at the level of households or individuals. Such approaches combine many of the strengths of existing theoretical paradigms in archaeology while offering productive means of reconciling entrenched divides between considerations of process and agency (compare ), containing the physical correlates of past cooperation and competition, including the particular resources that were utilized through collective action and the symbols people manipulated to define themselves as cooperative or antagonistic.