LABOR AND THE RISE OF COMPLEX HUNTER-GATHERERS

In recent years, an explosion of interest in the causes of cultural complexity, particularly the rise of complex hunter-gatherers, has generated an exciting intellectual exchange. Existing models of the emergence of middle-range societies depend on notions of population growth, risk management and stress, political manipulation, and conflict. In order to understand the appearance of complex foraging-collecting societies, there is a need to synthesize rather than polarize aspects of these perspectives, particularly the political and adaptationist approaches to modeling cultural evolution. I suggest that the emergence of chiefly politics and ascribed power is ultimately contingent on the development of elite control over labor. Specific opportunities for rising leadership to manipulate household labor may emerge from a range of conditions of sociopolitical or environmental stress. © 1993 Academic Press, Inc.