But the problem goes beyond a phenomenological level, I think. Archaeological and anthropological endeavours are so profoundly implicated in imperial and civilised projects of domination and exploitation that I view them with deep suspicion. Another term commonly used to describe primitive tribes is egalitarianism, which in our society carrys a veneer of leftist spite and envy, as well as Christian insipidness. But among primitives it is merely a natural outcome of individuals self-actualizing outside the specializations imposed by our artificial way of life. Well, that's another example of imposing categories on 'the primitive' which are ideologically loaded.
Egalitarianism is a bourgeois ideal because it merely means 'equal before the law'.
As anarchism wants to abolish the law and the social contract upon which it supposedly rests, egalitarianism has nothing to do with anarchism. In this sense, one can discern a rough equivalence between primal anarchy and post-civilisation anarchy, but nothing more. The myth of the noble savage is always a temptation for those who see themselves as primitivists. And it's a convenient knee-jerk criticism for those who are hostile to primitivism. I get rather tired of continually having to hack through the thickets of misconceptions that come along with the word.