Tamil brahmins in Delhi

Agricultural innovations

Demographic study

Channels of communication

Immigrant Bengalis in Delhi

Killekyathas of Karnataka

Working women

This dissertation examines the relationship between intensive agriculture and the development of chiefly societies in the Lower Guayas Basin, coastal Ecuador. The Yaguachi chiefdom arose in the area at least during the Integration Period AD 700-Spanish contact. This social formation built intensive agriculture technology (raised fields) and large earth mounds. Two approaches, top-down and a bottom-up, are contrasted to identify where along a socio-political continuum the organization of the Yaguachi chiefdom lay. The research aimed to reconstruct regional settlement patterns using the spatial distribution of sites and their relationships to raised field zones. Data gathering included methods such as aerial photogrametry and subsurface testing. Excavation was conducted through shovel tests, auger probes and a limited number of excavation units. The surveyed area consisted of 428. 29 km², and survey results identified 622 mounds clustered into 16 settlements located along the borders of a large zone of raised fields. These settlements form a three-tiered hierarchy with three main regional centers, sub-centers, agricultural villages and isolated households. Raised fields were found in large tracts. Sites show a strong tendency to cluster, and, for the most part, large centers had large supporting populations. Those centers are located adjacent to raised field zones. Evidence at the core of one of the sites indicates that considerable feasting activities took place. Differences in access to resources among households correspond to their location within the three-tiered hierarchy. Raised field construction required large labor inputs, and they provided large outputs. Mound building activities, feasting and burial practices indicate strong sense of community in the local population. This evidence leads to the conclusions that local chiefs were engaged in the management of raised field production, and that public mound building and feasting activities served to make this possible.

All households in prehistoric communities without well established sociopolitical hierarchies were concerned, first and foremost, with meeting their subsistence needs. Because the emergence of non-food producing elite households means that, at some point, they began to focus on other activities, the domestic economy is where complexity begins to develop. Participation in craft production and exchange activities can provide opportunities for some households to accumulate wealth and/or prestige; this is the basis for a model of political economy tested against data from a site in the Andean altiplano. One objective of this dissertation project was to reconstruct the local history of Jachakala, a small village in the central Bolivian highlands occupied from ca. AD 170-1200. Artifacts from house floors, middens, and other features are divided into three chronological periods and grouped into three zones. Comparative inter-zonal and diachronic analyses are conducted to test models of the domestic economy and political economy derived from Kenneth Hirth's work in Mesoamerica. The domestic economy model predicts a low degree of socioeconomic differentiation within a subsistence-oriented community. Patterns of staple and craft production, wealth inequalities, and supra-regional exchange are reconstructed to test this model against data from the first occupation, the Niñalupita Period. I also test the hypothesis that differential participation in exchange and craft production activities underwrote the emergence of socioeconomic stratification, the central tenet of the Hirth model of political economy. There are significant inter-zonal differences in exchange goods and craft production refuse from the Isahuara and Jachakala Periods, but participation in these activities did not cause a political economy to develop, because some wealth inequalities predate this diversity. Finally, I used Tiwanaku-style artifacts from Jachakala to assess relations with this pre-Inkan state. Results suggest that Tiwanaku's influence on local processes was minimal and indirect, and implications for models of inter-regional relationships are explored. Although this investigation focuses on one community in the central Bolivian altiplano, I hope that it will be of comparative value for archaeologists investigating domestic economy, household organization, the origins of complexity, and core-periphery relations in and beyond the Andes.

The main objective of this dissertation is to reconstruct patterns of social organization and degrees of social stratification in Monte Albán, the capital of the ancient Zapotec state in what is now the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Social stratification has been defined as the division of a society into categories of individuals organized into hierarchical segments based on access to strategic resources. The study of social stratification is an important aspect to research about the development of complex societies, since stratification has its origin in differential access to strategic resources, and, once the state arises as a form of government, this inequality is institutionalized, and social strata or social classes are formed. This research is based on archaeological data from 12 residential units distributed throughout three different parts of the city and attempts to clarify the composition of the social structure at Monte Albán. Architecture, funerary practices, material goods, and health conditions, were used as archaeological indicators for identifying and evaluating domestic rituals, prestige, and levels of wealth throughout time.