Abstract
I examine social dynamics of prestate societies of the North Central European Plain, 500–1000 CE. My analysis concerns the archaeological data on spatial distribution and hierarchy of settlements, emergence of defensive settlements, distinction in social statuses and concentration of power, indirect evidence on collective action, and warfare. The key method employed is to analyse the density of networks of social interdependence. The data suggest that the 500-year period comprised four phases of social change of various duration and intensity. I focus on the characteristics of authority that range from participatory polycentric to centralized decision-making scheme, and introduce a new concept of authority that refers to intersecting levels of governance. It is presented as a conceptualization that affairs of social complexities are governed by a bifurcated arrangement: the centralized and structured government system, and a multicentric system of diverse types of collectivities that constitute a complementary source of authority with actors that cooperate, or sometimes compete, but constantly interact with each other.
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Notes
- 1.
Neologism used by Rosenau and Czempiel (1992).
- 2.
I purposely do not use written sources to mitigate confirmation bias and to test the potential of the archaeological record.
- 3.
Analytical unit used here to identify small, goal-oriented, cooperating community. See Wenger (1998).
- 4.
The reasons and historic context for this displacement is not significant for my reasoning. In older European literature the movements of people in the 500s and early 600s CE are referred to collectively as the Great Migrations Period, Völkerwanderung in German literature. Simply put, at time of hardship people modify their strategic repertoire to manage risk by simplifying their culture and moving (migrating) from economically and politically unstable regions. The ultimate goal is survival and not political gains.
- 5.
Transient functional political scheme of governance is difficult to notice archaeologically, but it might be identified through the analytical approach presented in this paper.
- 6.
I presented this concept in a paper “Sphere of authority as an analytical unit to assess levels of political (dis)integration” presented at the World Congress on State Origins and Related Subjects, Wigry, Poland, September 2014. The publication of the conference proceedings is forthcoming.
- 7.
This province also leads in the number of sites with status markers. It was the core of the TSA.
- 8.
I do not attempt any epigenetic analysis of the people who inhabited the NCEP between 500 and 1000 CE. The generic term “Slavs” used to label ethnic groups presently living in southern, central, and eastern Europe and speaking Slavic languages has little historic sense for the time period discussed in this study and is similar in its explanatory value to such meaningless labels as “bushmen” to identify culturally and linguistically diverse foraging groups in southern Africa, or “Indians” to label different native societies of the Americas.
- 9.
- 10.
The basic condition for human interaction in less complex societies; balanced rather than generalized, cf. Sahlins (1972: 193–195).
- 11.
Witnessed by Pospisil among the Kapauku of New Guinea, cf. Pospisil (1963: 49).
- 12.
For instance the Ojibwa chiefs, who have been labeled as leader by the European traders and later accepted as such by their peers, cf. Hallowell and Brown (1992).
- 13.
Elaborate burials of the Alt Käbelich type, cf. Dulinicz (2001: 8–9).
- 14.
See Carneiro (2012).
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Lozny, L.R. (2017). Societal Dynamics of Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains, 500–1000 CE: A Model. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_3
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