Pathways to power
Subtitle: new perspectives on the emergence of social inequality
By: T. Douglas Price, Gary M. Feinman, editors
Contributors: Society for American Archaeology. Meeting
Series: Fundamental issues in archaeology; Fundamental issues in archaeology
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9781441962997; 9781441963000
Subjects: Sociale stratificatie; Equality; Ethnoarchaeology; Prehistoric peoples; Social stratification; Social structure; Social evolution; Social conditions; Primitive societies; Hierarchies; Archeologische aspecten; History
Other titles: Foundations of social inequality.
Description: "There are few questions more central to understanding the prehistory of our species than those regarding the institutionalization of social inequality. Social inequality is manifested in unequal access to goods, information, decision-making, and power. This structure is essential to higher orders of social organization and basic to the operation of more complex societies. An understanding of the transformation from relatively egalitarian societies to a hierarchical organization and socioeconomic stratification is fundamental to our knowledge about the human condition. In a follow-up to their 1995 book Foundations of Social Inequality, the Editors of this volume have compiled a new and comprehensive group of studies concerning these central questions. When and where does hierarchy appear in human society, and how does it operate? With numerous case studies from the Old and New World, spanning foraging societies to agricultural groups, and complex states, Pathways to Power provides key historical insights into current social and cultural questions."--
Notes: Follow-up to Foundations of social inequality / edited by T. Douglas Price, Gary M. Feinman: New York : Plenum Press, c1995. Cf. pref.

Outgrowth of a symposium at the [72nd] annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in [Austin], Tex., in 2007. Cf. pref.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Social inequality and the evolution of human social organization / T. Douglas Price and Gary M. Feinman; title: On the evolution of the human capacity for inequality and/or egalitarianism / Kenneth M. Ames; title: Degrees and kinds of inequality / Robert D. Drennan, Christian E. Peterson, and Jake R. Fox; title: Gimme that old time religion : rethinking the role of religion in the emergence of social inquality / Mark Aldendorfer; title: Who benefits from complecity? : a view from Futuna / Brian Hatden and Suzanne Villeneuve; title: Traces of inequality at the origins of agriculture in the ancient Near East / T. Douglas Price and ofer Bar-Yosef; title: Decentralized complexity : the case of Bronze Age northern Europe / Kristian Kristiansen; title: Bitter arrows and generous gifts : what was a 'king' in the European Iron Age? / Tina L. Thurston; title: A dual-processual perspective on the power and inequality in the contemporary United States : framing political economy for the past and the present / Gary M. Feinman.