Theories of the State and Early State Formation: New Insights from the Archaeological Turn in Political Theory

 

"The Government" is something you'll hear people talk about a lot. And you'll even hear

everyday people talking about "the State" from time to time, at least in the USA. But usually by

"the state" we mean our own state government, as in, "do you work for the state?" If you hear

people talking about "the State" in the abstract, well then you're probably talking to someone

who has some familiarity with scholarship in fields like political science, anthropology,

archaeology, philosophy, or history. It's a term I use a lot as a professor of political theory. But

like many abstract terms that are useful to social theorists, it's bedevilingly difficult to define.

I. Traditional Archaeological and Anthropological Theories of the State, and Post-Colonial

Skepticism about such Theories

Definitions are over-rated, it's true. But in certain scholarly fields, it is hard to avoid the

definitional problem. In the case of "the State," it's especially hard for archaeologists and

anthropologists to avoid the definitional puzzle. They often find themselves arguing over what is

and isn't a state. Political scientists, on the other hand, usually are less concerned with the

definition of the state. In the middle of the twentieth century, most political scientists in the non-

Marxist West abandoned the whole concept as too metaphysical and unscientific. Some political

scientists have resurrected the concept in recent decades (Skocpol 1978, Mitchell 1991, Scott

1998), but most are content to study how states work in the contemporary world and how they

interact with one another, without examining the concept itself too closely, and without feeling

compelled to theorize the state vs. non-state distinction. States themselves have developed

institutions for mutually recognizing one another as a legitimate state. In this practical and political way, states have solved their own definitional problem in the contemporary political context. So, political scientists, sociologists, economists, and even historians can usually just take the state for granted and avoid, if they wish, the definitional questions, and even worse, the metaphysical ones.

Such questions seem to be harder for anthropologists to ignore, perhaps because they have

historically sought out for study societies very different from their own. Anthropologists almost

always hail from what we call "nation-states," and they have felt compelled from their

disciplinary beginnings to mark a distinction between their own type of society and the societies

they study. The same can be said of archaeologists who study prehistory. In the 19th and early

20th century, influential social theorists such as Friedrich Engels century placed the state in an

evolutionary ladder of social complexity (Engels 1990). For Engles the ladder started with

primitive communism and rises through oriental despotism, slave economies, feudalism, to

capitalism. A simplified and less Eurocentric version was offered in the early 20th century by

cultural anthropologist Elman Service (1962), positing the band-tribe-cheiftain-state progression,

which still enjoys some credibility among contemporary Western scholars.

Some "neo-evolutionist" archaeologist and cultural anthropologists have held onto some version

of Service's evolutionary framework, if not Engels'. Many other contemporary archaeologists and

anthropologists, though, have rejected such schemas, casting doubt particularly on the

teleological and universalizing tendencies of "evolutionism." In part, the rejection of socio-

political evolutionism is an element of the post-colonial critiques of the late 20th century.

Viewed skeptically, such evolutionary thinking seems like a chauvanistic, Euro-centric

viewpoint that conveniently puts the modern colonizers at the apex of the evolutionary ladder,

defining social difference as lack and consigning alternative social forms to the past. (Luke

2002) Such skepticism and critiques are to be taken seriously. The distinction between state and

non-state societies, and thus the validity of the state itself as a real, useful, or legitimate category,

has naturally been swept up in such critiques. Is there really any such thing as the state? Isn't it

just a social construct engineered by colonizers to de-legitimize the lifeways of those they would

like to exploit and dispossess?

Beyond the academic concerns of disciplines, most complex societies throughout history have

tended to mark a distinction between their own "civilized" society and "uncivilized" outsiders, a

moniker usually applied to those groups living in more ecologically marginal territories, in

smaller, less-dense population groupings, with less sedentary ways of life. So, from the

perspective of more complex/state societies, such distinctions always seem to have a normative

dimension that leans favorably to the state form. And that normative outlook may account, at

least partly, for the tendency to mark a distinction between states and non-state societies. Long

usage of words in other languages (such as the Chinese guòjiā) that operate semantically and

normatively very much like "state" and its cognates in European languages suggests the concept

itself is not particular to only one culture. Nonetheless, suspicion that there is a chauvinistic,

normative viewpoint at work fuels implicit or explicit critiques of the very category of the state,

particularly from indigenous and post-colonial perspectives.

If you decide you want to deconstruct a concept or category like "the state" by way of

definitional fault-finding, you'll discover it's pretty easy to do. "Where exactly is the line between

state and non-state?" you might ask. When exactly did your state become a state? And what

exactly made the difference? And why exactly does that particular moment or that particular setof characteristics mark the transition to statehood? Definitive answers to such questions are

always weak. The same game of deconstruction can be played with any categorical concept, and

pretty much all concepts are categorical.

Such games of conceptual deconstruction are useful in chastening overly-rigid deployments of

"logical" argumentation, but they exhaust their usefulness quickly as they approach

epistemological nihilism. Recognizing and theorizing conceptual distinctions are as important as

recognizing and understanding their limitations. Theorizing the State is important in this general

way, and it may be especially important if one's goal is to understand, critique, and question

current political realities, as well as understanding alternatives to these realities, including past,

present, and future alternatives to the State.

II. How the State has been Mostly Theorized as the "Modern State" by Social Scientists

Where anthropologists and archaeologists seem to focus on definitional questions more than

other fields, we political theorists, for our part, do share with these fields an abiding interest in

the related question of why states (or if you wish, "complex political societies") first emerge, as

this question bears upon the normative questions that are central to political theory. Knowing

why states first emerged provides at least a possible basis for knowing what states ought to be

and do. If they arose as voluntary agreements among equals, then we might conclude that states

are fundamentally legitimate and they ought to provide equal opportunities and protections to all.

If they arose as machineries of domination, by which, for example, pastoral warrior bands could

systematically fleece sedentary farmers, then perhaps states are fundamentally illegitimate and

ought to be overthrown, at least if we identify with the farmers.

Many theories of the State offered by social scientists have been primarily theories of the modern

European state and/or post-colonial states. This would apply (though in various ways) to works

on this topic by Marx and Engels, Carl Schmitt (2005), Max Weber (1978), Norbert Elias (2000),

Charles Tilly (1990), Theda Skocpol (1979), Benedict Anderson (1983), and Timothy Mitchell

(1991). However, confusion may arise if we conflate the origins of the modern European state

and the post-colonial state with the origins of states more broadly, and particularly if we

implicitly or explicitly expect the early modern origin stories of European states to speak to the

essence of the State more broadly.

The formation of modern states out of the plural European system of highly unstable and

bureaucratically very weak medieval feudal kingdoms constitutes a peculiar chapter of world

history--one which is well worth studying given its global impact, but also one which is not

generalizable as a global and transhistorical model of of state-formation. The fluctuating

European feudal power-centers of the early Middle Ages can only tenuously and doubtfully be

called states. What was perhaps most exceptional about Europe in this period was actually the

protracted period of statelessness--the so-called "Dark Ages"--that was all the more uncommon

because it persisted in a context of considerable economic, cultural, and technological

advancement, a context inherited from the preceding Mediterranean states of the Classical Age.

Indeed, knowledge and memory of states--particularly the Roman one--was an important part of

that cultural context. But only in the late medieval period, after long centuries of feudal anarchy,

was the state re-realized in Northern and Western Europe,The fact that European modern states developed with discernible inspiration from the Roman

model is important. The "modern" (European) state in this sense was a secondary (or tertiary or

quaternary) metastasization of earlier states. They were partly inspired and induced, that is, by

prior Mediterranean city-states, which were themselves inspired and induced by the primary

states of Egypt and Mesopotamia. While the European context is important, if we wish to

understand the State more comprehensively and essentially, it is necessary to look outside of the

European context at other pathways of state formation and state evolution, including looking at

ancient states, and particularly at the formation of primary or so-called "pristine" states, not just

in the Near East, but around the world.

III. How Recent Research on Ancient States and "Pristine" States has been Engaged by Some

Contemporary Social Theorists

Detailed primary study of pristine states and the non-state social contexts out of which they

developed has necessarily been the work of archaeologists and anthropologists. Revelations from

archaeological fieldwork in recent decades as well as significant interpretive work by

archaeologists like Norman Yoffee (Myths of the Archaic State, 2009), David Anthony (The

Horse, the Wheel, and Language 2007), Ruth Shady (Caral: The First Civilization of the

Americas 2010) and Ian Hodder (The Leopards Tale, 2011), have offered promising material for

better understanding pristine states and their contexts.

Social theorists in other fields have likewise shown increasing interest in archaeology's findings

in recent decades. Pristine state formation (and nomadic resistance to early states) is the specific

focus of James C. Scott's Against the Grain (2017). David Graeber's collaboration with

archaeologist David Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything (2021) similarly makes wide-ranging

use of recent discoveries to emphasize the diversity and complexity of non-state societies while

also marking, perhaps inadvertently, a clear transition to the state form, which they see as

something like a tipping point into a radical closure of societal possibilities. In a similar vein,

David Stasavage's The Decline and Rise of Democracy (2020) is an exposition of archaeological

and anthropological evidence of widespread and complex "early democracy," which he posits as

an alternative pathway to political complexity. These democratic pathways to complexity are

juxtaposed to the "autocratic alternative" represented by the well-known early monarchies in

China, Mesopotamia, and Meso-America.

IV. Features of Ancient and Pristine States as Informed by Recent Discoveries and Scholarship

Although conceptualizing the distinction between state and non-state societies is not the primary

purpose of the above-mentioned works, collectively this recent body of scholarship offers

resources for a renewed understanding of that distinction—its limitations, but also its usefulness,

and even perhaps its reality. Emerging from these and other recent works exploring early social

complexity are a few significant features of early state formation that would not be obvious

without the work of archaeologists.

1. First, the earliest states tend to emerge very suddenly. This tendency is highlighted most

strongly in the work of Norman Yoffee, who has been involved in interdisciplinary collaborative

research on complexity theory at the Santa Fe Institute. Evolutionary theories imply gradual and step-wise transitions. However, most early city-states seem to emerge rapidl--within a few decades to a few generations--often without going through any recognizable transitional phase such as the "cheifdom." Cahokia, for example, has been likened to a "big bang." (Pauketat). Drawing on the examples ranging from Wari in the Andes to Teotihuacàn in Mexico and Uruk in Mesopotamia, Norman Yoffee writes "the evolution of ancient states was unlikely to have gone through a phase like cheifdoms." (Yoffee 2005, 44)

Yoffee suggest, in fact, that the evidence from the earliest city-states requires that archaeologists build new social theory. 

2. The second insight regarding early state formation emerging over recent decades is that the

specific reason for, or “efficient cause” of state formation seems to vary hopelessly. Managing

irrigation, distributing agricultural surplus, organizing class domination or conquest, trucking

and bartering, and the necessities of collective defense have all, whether alone or in various

combinations, been posited as universal rationales for early state formation. Although all of these

theories can find some support from specific sites, none of them has been definitively supported

in archaeological research of recent decades. It seems increasingly difficult to settle on one

“purpose” common to all or even most pristine states. Early states like Egypt or the Aztec state

did not use irrigation in ways the required or resulted in centralized water management. The

extensive research of Karl Polanyi (1957) on ancient economies as well as the extensive

anthropological evidence compiled by David Graeber (2011) in Debt: The First 5000

Years refute commercial exchange as a primary or typical cause of social complexity and state

formation.

The military rationale of early state formation goes back at least as far as Hobbes and

Machiavelli, and it has perhaps been the most respected single explanation since anthropologist

Robert Caneiro's work the topic in 1970. Regardless of how states first formed, there is clearly

an historical and pre-historical connection between war and the state. The arguments of Carl

Schmidt and Charles Tilly, among others, are convincing in this regard. However, violence as a

generalizable explanation of state formation is also questionable in light of recent archaeological

research. Perhaps most notably, the excavation of Caral, an extraordinarily ancient, large-scale

urban site in the Andes, has revealed no defensive structures and little evidence of violence either

internal or external. Rather, evidence at Caral points to a ritual center and economic partnership

between farmers and fishers (Shady 2010). While evidence of violence is generally widespread

in all archaeological sites, there are other notable sites, such as the Indus Valley city-states, that

are puzzlingly devoid of evidence of violence and defensive structures. Similarly, the so-called

"megavillage" of Çatal Höyuk, while showing no evidence of even incipient statehood, also

showed little to no evidence of either lethal violence or security considerations in the

architecture. Together, such sites call into question the frequent assumption that security

concerns are the driving force behind state formation.

Recent research, moreover, has positively suggested new rationales for state formation that

previously had not been widely considered. The discovery of complex neolithic cultic centers

such as Gobekli Tepe (this one also in Anatolia and some 11,000 years old) complete withmassive public works accomplished by apparently pre-pottery and pre-agricultural nomadic foragers, suggests that the first city-states may have emerged as religious or cultural projects, rather than for economic, security, or agricultural reasons. Archaeologists tell us that the most complex sites in North America, Chaco and Cahokia, emerged as ceremonial centers. Neither is confidently in the state category by archaeological consensus, but Cahokia is so clearly similar to early states that at least one leading excavator, Timothy Pauketat, defines it as one. The ceremonial impetus for early city-states finds further support in the architectural features of ancient urban sites. The leading 20th century urban historian and city planner, Kevin Lynch, recognized three basic "city forms:" cosmic, practical, and organic. Lynch noted that, perhaps ironically, the earliest cities are not organic, but rather cosmic in structure. They did not develop

from unthinking accretion of vernacular architecture, but rather they were planned in a way that

reflects a cosmic or religious order.

The upshot of this, in my interpretation, is that there is no singular reason why states first

formed. Mesopotamian and Chinese early states clearly had a lot to do with grain agriculture and

irrigation. Some pristine states, like Caral, may have been commercial meeting places. Others,

like Egypt and Tenochtitlan, may have had a lot to do with violence and warfare, as Caneiro

argued. Still others, like Cahokia, were clearly ritual centers, and rituality likely played a central

role in most cases of pristine state formation, even when other factors were at work.

3. The third and final general insight arising from recent research is simply that the state is real.

States can be usefully identified and distinguished from non-state societies. While a particular

pathway to the early state cannot be established, the significance and reality of a distinction

between states and non-states does find support in recent scholarship. One reason to take the

distinction seriously is the suddenness of the transition, mentioned above. It is not the case that

gradual state formation never happens. So-called chiefdoms/kingdoms with gradually

complexifying and intensifying hierarchies and gradually widening geographies of power and

influence do occur in some sites. The coastal Calusa Kingdom in pre-Columbian South Florida is

one such example. And this, again, points to the variation in pathways to the State. However, the

general trend in pristine state formation is not gradual formation, but sudden emergence, which

lends a kind of temporal credibility to marking a distinction between the social formations

existing before and after these transitions.

However states arise, for whatever set of reasons, from whatever set of causes, once formed they

are recognizable primarily by a set of co-varying features which lend further credibility to the

state-nonstate distinction, and thereby to the state as a concept. V. Gordon Childe’s proposed a

set of 10 key features that should allow archaeologists to identify the emergence of states, or

what he called the “urban revolution.” (Childe 1950) Michael E Smith (2009) excerpts and

itemizes Childe’s ten features as follows [I have added labels in brackets]:

1. [Size & density] 'In point of size the first cities must have been more extensive and more

densely populated than any previous settlements.' (p. 9)

2. [Specialization] 'In composition and function the urban population already differed from

that of any village ... full-time specialist craftsmen, transport workers, merchants,

officials and priests.' (p. 11)

3. [Taxes] 'Each primary producer paid over the tiny surplus he could wring from the soil

with his still very limited technical equipment as tithe or tax to an imaginary deity or a

divine king who thus concentrated the surplus.' (p. 11)

4. [Monumental architecture] 'Truly monumental public buildings not only distinguish each

known city from any village but also symbolise the concentration of the social surplus.'

(p. 12)

5. [Heirarchy] 'But naturally priests, civil and military leaders and officials absorbed a

major share of the concentrated surplus and thus formed a "ruling class".' (pp. 12-13)

6. 'Writing' (p. 14)

7. [Science] 'The elaboration of exact and predictive sciences - arithmetic, geometry and

astronomy' (p. 14)

8. [Higher Art] 'Conceptualised and sophisticated styles [of art].' (p. 1

9. [Trade] 'Regular "foreign" trade over quite long distances.5 (p. 15)

10. [Territoriality] 'A State organisation based now on residence rather than kinship.' (p. 16)

Some of these features, such as literacy, science, art, trade, and territoriality, are either

inconsistently readable in the archaeological record or have been shown by recent research not to

co-vary as consistently as features. Sophisticated artistry, for example, is evidenced in sites, such

as Gobekli Tepe, that show few if any of the other features. Whether social power projection is

territorially defined is sometimes discernible through archaeological methods. Whether territory

supersedes kinship in terms of identity is more difficult to determine by such methods.

Perhaps for these reasons, features 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 are the ones, according to Smith, which are

still generally considered core markers of state formation. Whether social power projection is

territorially defined is sometimes discernible through archaeological methods. (Pauketat)

Whether territory supersedes kinship in terms of identity is doubtless more difficult to determine

by such methods. Overall, though, archaeology has supported rather than undermined the

conclusion that an impressive bundle of "state-features," tend to arise together--again, often within a

period of decades or a few generations. Those features can be boiled down to 1. size and density,

2. monumental architecture (albeit of a certain sort), 3. evidence of social stratification and

hierarchy, 4. and centralized re-appropriation of resources.

1./2. The rapid upward trajectory of site size and population size and density has already been

mentioned above with respect to the suddenness of state emergence. The other primary evidence

of sudden emergence, most often accompanying the former, is the appearance of monumental

architecture. The architectural modality of early states often tends toward maximizing the size

and height of the monumental constructions, and the desire to build large and tall buildings is

surely what accounts for the four-sided pyramid as the iconic architectural element of early

states. Non-state societies also build impressively, but they usually build effigies, henges,

communal burial complexes, or stone circles. In more advanced technological contexts, the

building of pyramidal architecture may be replaced by the building of palaces, fortresses, and

fortified cities--the latter often including a further fortified palace complex or acropolis in the

city center. But most sites recognized as pristine states feature some variation on the massive

four-sided pyramid in stone, rammed earth, or mudbrick. Examples come readily to mind in

Egypt, Mesopotamia, Meso-America, the Andes, and at Cahokia. The earliest state-like site inChina, Erlitou, is the most notable exception. The rulers of Erlitou settled for rectilinear palace

complex on a rammed earth platform that was large in area but only a few meters high.

3. The third feature, which tends to accompany such architecture and increased settlement size, is

evidence of hierarchy and stratification. Some stratification exists in societies without the other

state features. But stratification of the population that is extreme and conspicuous and

permanent—rather than associated with particular times of year or temporary roles—is a feature

co-varying with the others. But often quickly reaching extreme manifestations. Chiefly or kingly

burials are one of the clearest markers. Often rich grave sites or tombs are clear markers of elite

status, or even monarchical status. Perhaps the clearest marker of hierarchy in grave sites is the

presence of retainer sacrifices, individuals killed and buried with presumably a king, queen, or

noble person. Such chiefly burials do sometimes occur in societies with no sign of monumental

architecture, but they are much more likely to be found in association with such architecture, and

they tend to be more elaborate when that is the case. There are many other features that similarly

indicate a kind of intense hierarchy that is evident only in certain human societies--features such

as variations in sizes of residence, general presence of prestige goods, differential access to

nutrition, evidence of slavery and other patterns of the deployment of violence within a

community. This kind of exceptional hierarchy seems to proceed, over short time horizons if not immediately, toward monarchy. In Early Civilzations, one of the most comprehensive and widely cited recent books of comparative archaeology, Bruce Trigger cites monarchy as one of the few features common to all of the seven early state systems he studies. (Trigger 2003) It isn't always possible to discern monarchy as a feature of the earliest pristine states, but a strong tendency, at least, toward the monarchical form is evident as co-varying with these other features. 

4. The fourth feature, tending to be co-present with both stately architecture and evidence of

hierarchy, is evidence of the centralized collection of tribute and the re-distribution of wealth,

usually in the form of basic resources. In smaller early states, this may sometimes be a rather

non-bureaucratized process, as for example in the Medieval warlord kingdoms of northern

Europe in their early stages of development. However, systems of economic redistribution often

ramp up quickly to a point where bureaucracy is necessary, and systems of storage, transport,

and record keeping are usually apparent in archaeological sites that present the foregoing

features.

Additional core features have been suggested, such as the presence of grain agriculture. James C.

Scott and others have pointed out, for example, that grain lends itself to taxation, storage, and

redistribution more readily than other staple food sources. And yet there are exceptions; in the

Andes and and Calusa (on the Florida Peninsula), states formed without the predominance of

grain agriculture. No doubt there are a few other examples. But if we take only the four core features mentioned above--their tendency to arise together, to mutually reinforce one another, and to decline together in periods of state collapse--suggest that "the State" is a distinct and recognizable formation, a particular modality of human society, which differs in systematic ways from other forms of human society. 

V. Complexity Theory and The State

As noted above, Yoffee says archaeologists need new kinds of social theory, and in a talk delivered at BYU in 2013, he began to offer one, likening early state formation to a phase transition similar to the freezing of water. Water doesn't gradually harden, as molten glass does, for example. Rather, as temperature lowers, it reaches a point at which rapid crystallization, though not strictly determined by temperature, becomes an immanent possibility. The freezing process actually requires some impurity--some contingency, we might say--around which the crystallization of water molecules can begin. Similarly, it seems that states become an immanent possibility under certain conditions of human sociality--conditions which probably have to do with geography, technology, and population densities. 

In suggesting this model, Yoffee was drawing upon his collaborations at the Santa Fe Institute, an interdisciplinary research institute focused on complexity theory and non-linear systems. Complexity theory, a.k.a. chaos theory, has been applied most notably in natural science fields like climatology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. In climatology, for example, ice ages and interglacial periods can be understood as relatively stable "basins of attraction" in the climate system of the earth. Various trends can build up to push the climate out of one basin of attraction, tipping the climate into a different modality, such as an interglacial period, which has its own dynamics tending toward temporary stability, until planetary processes feed back on themselves enough to reach a new tipping point. In evolutionary biology, the process of convergent evolution can be understood similarly. Certain evolutionary forms, such as crabs, trees, or vines, seem to be basins of attraction in the space of possibilities of multi-cellular life forms. Not long ago, it became a meme that crabs have evolved six different times in planetary history, from divergent lineages. The state can be understood the same way. Like crabs, vines, trees, and ice ages, states are manifestations of a specific virtual zone of possibility that pre-exists its own actualization and arises from the nested complex systems that form it's context.

Importantly, the existence of the state as a basin of attraction is very different from its existence as a Platonic ideal form. Attractors are emergent realities within immanence, not eternal realities that participate in transcendence. The immanent space in which attractors form is itself evolving. Attractors may come and go, or weaken and strengthen, over relatively short or immensely long time periods. Attractors such as the phases of matter are very stabilized and longstanding attractors. The elements of the periodic table have held sway as attractors since very early in the hypothetical beginning of the universe. Crabs and states, on the other hand, while not fundamentally different, are of much more recent provenance and hold much less deterministic force. Moreover, the actually existing trees, crabs, and states (as well as their precursors and fellows) are themselves agents, witting or unwitting, in the transformation of the spaces of possibilities. (According to theories of emergent causality, this would be true in principle even of more ancient and determinative attractors.) In this sort of universe, structured by these sorts of realities, there is a baseline of indeterminacy. Certain outcomes may be practically determined, but only against an ultimate background of what we might call "rump indeterminacy." 

One likely objection to the theory of the state that I have cobbled together in the previous section is to point to the great diversity of pre-modern, complex societies that do not seem to be encompassed by the 'state" category, but also seem to be not only extremely noteworthy for political theorists, but also so complex as to be clearly distinguishable from the classic image of the non-state society, understood as a very small mobile-foraging band. Such an objection could draw evidence from the extensive research David Stasavage has done on early democracies, or from the perhaps even broader array of cases surveyed by Wengrow and Graeber in The Dawn of Everything. My suggestion in response is that understanding the state as one significant and powerful attractor in what is an otherwise open and indeterminant space of human sociality actually helps us make sense of the cases brought to light in such studies.

I will offer, for now, just one example. Consider the case of Çatal Höyuk, a 9000 year old "mega-village" in Anatolia. This densely populated conurbation of some 5000 to 8000 settled agriculturalists defies previous understandings of non-state societies. It should have evolved into a state, yet it persisted as a mega-village for millennia in prehistory. Just as in a hypothetical state of complete purity and homogeneity water could be super-cooled without freezing, state formation is not guaranteed even when seemingly sufficient conditions, such as high population density and settled agriculture, are present. Çatal Höyuk is one of a few recently emerging examples of a society that is well below freezing temperature, to extend the metaphor, but avoided crystalization into statehood.

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