How Chiefs Come to Power: Political Economy in Prehistory.by Earle New<|

How Chiefs Come to PowerThe Political Economy in Prehistory\nAuthor(s): Timothy Earle\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780804728553, 978-0804728553\nSynopsis\nBy studying chiefdomskin-based societies in which a person's place in a kinship system determines his or her social status and political positionthis book addresses several fundamental questions concerning the nature of political power and the evolution of sociopolitical complexity. In a chiefdom, the highest-status male (first son by the first wife) holds both authority and special access to economic, military, and ideological power, and others derive privilege from their positions in the chiefly hierarchy.\n\n A chiefdom is also a regional polity with institutional governance and some social stratification organizing a population of a few thousand to tens of thousands of people. The author argues that the fundamental dynamics of chiefdoms are.