Evolutionary Spatial Systems: A Summary of the Problem

Abstract

The idea that societal systems have evolved over time permeates much anthropological writing. Only ‘a real flat-earther’ says Goody, could maintain otherwise (Goody, 1971, p. 20). This accepted, the problem becomes one of how this evolutionary shift should be formulated. Concerned ostensibly with the organisation of society in space, my approach to this formulation has been deliberately slanted. Yet if what I have argued reads like a general history of societal systems, then this is because the history of spatial systems is not a problem we can detach from the organisational issues that surround this wider problem. Indeed, the case for seeing the spatial organisation of society as a central rather than a marginal factor in its evolutionary development is a strong one. It is a case that has been restated time and time again by anthropologists. For them, the problem of societal evolution is about the growing scale and organisational complexity of society, aspects that have an intrinsically-spatial dimension.