The Chiefdom Chart

It's here! Well, technically, it's here.
That's right, after much reading and organizing, I have finally created a prototype for a chiefdom chart. It is my hope that such a chart will make it easier to compare different  populations to determine the extent of their settlement, given Service's social evolutionary scale of ascending social complexity: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, State.

Whereas some may disagree with creating a sort of "checklist" to categorize a settlement, asserting that this attempts to dehumanize and reduce to mere data the human beings that make up the population, I feel that having a versatile tool with which to measure and compare different settlements is actually positive. Indeed, such an assessment does the inhabitants of the settlement in question justice because it enables us to better understand their lifestyles and their culture.

Additionally, the creation of a chiefdom chart should not be viewed as a move to homogenize cultural distinctions or cram fragile cultural features into a generic mold. This tool is, rather, a way to gauge similarities and differences in structure. In no way is it an attempt to limit or marginalize the expressions of any population.

Now, to the chart!
If you look, you will see that there are 4 columns (in the original Word document, there are only 2 columns, with certain subcategories--at any rate, in trying to put the chart on the web somehow so that you could see it, the creation of the subcategories into their own columns seems to have been a necessary point of compromise, so bear with me, please!)
The main feature of the chart is its two hemispheres. On the "General Model" side (which corresponds to the first three columns), I have listed the features that were mentioned in various articles as being strong indicators of a chiefdom. The bracketed letter-number combinations denote the article and the page on which such evidence was cited, which corresponds to the rough bibliography found at the bottom of the chart. The second side, "Heckenberger's Observations," is where I have noted Heckenberger citing instances of these features that we have just deemed indicative of a chiefdom, whether they are present-day performances or enactments suggested in the archaeological record. The numbers in parentheses correspond to the pages on which these references are made.

If you will also observe, some boxes are shaded. This is where the excitement starts--Red shading indicates areas where no evidence of the given feature was reported in Heckenberger's account. Looking at the chart, there are 5: "Special Burial Instances," "Luxury Goods," "Inheriting," "Redistribution" and "Tribute."
Yellow shading denotes areas that Dr. Carneiro and I have felt are among the strongest indicators of the presence of a chiefdom, including "Resource Concentration," "Chiefly Status," "Multiple, Interconnected Villages," "Substantial Populations" and "Warfare."
If you will note, for the majority of these particularly indicative areas there was a high quantity of references by Heckenberger. The one exception was "Chiefly Status." While this was definitely discussed more than once (i.e. more than on just page 4), these instances referred to the more modern institution of "chief," NOT a prehistoric one. Indeed, it would be difficult to ascertain whether or not there were chiefs centuries ago simply based off memory, be it written (which is nonexistent) or oral (which does not span back as far as we need it to.) However, we can recognize three subcategories that would also hint at the presence of the chief. Even though Heckenberger cites evidence for only one of these subcategories ("Palace"), we must remember that a lack of evidence does not so much assert that the feature did not exist, but rather that nothing has been found to prove that it did. We must simply wait and hope that further excavations will yield insightful clues!

I view the compilation of this chart as major headway in this research progress--it's hard to believe that I'm finally to the point where I can start compiling everything that I've learned in preparation for a final wrap-up. In fact, next week is my last week at the museum! But it's rewarding to know that all of the work and research that I've been doing for the past two months will eventually come to fruition: Dr. Carneiro and I will be writing a paper discussing these very findings, and with any luck I will be presenting it at the International Congress of Americanists conference next July. Dr. Carneiro has begun to work on the introduction to this paper, and I have created an outline of the points that I feel should be discussed (it is even more important than usual that I get all these written down and organized because this paper is more or less a response to Heckenberger, and I want to make sure I don't leave anything out!)
My next step will be to organize the chiefdom chart so that it's ordered according to the importance of the factors--for instance, because "Multiple, Interconnected Villages" is rather inherent to the idea of a chiefdom (which, as defined by Kalervo Oberg in 1955, is essentially a multi-village polity governed by a paramount ruler), it would appear at the top.
And so on!
Stay tuned :)