Entrenched

In one of the earlier posts, I mentioned that the landscape of the Upper Xingu (UX) region features some sets of deep trenches. For their part, the Kuikuru attribute the trench construction to one of their gods, Fitsi-Fitsi. According to oral legend, Fitsi-fitsi was basically a man who one day decided to whittle his right leg into a sharp point--"his weapon." When he realized that his family in the village had locked their doors and refused to open them when they found out what he had done, Fitsi-fitsi gathered "his people" (the myth is vague about to whom this refers) and set out for the forest. It is said that whenever he came across a place that would be suitable for his people to reside, he used his pointed leg to make deep ditches. These semicircular trenches, he explained to the people, would serve as shelter from cold winds. He would leave a group of his people there to form a village, and continue on until he found another spot, marking it in the same fashion. This process continued until he reached what is today known as Kuhikugu, the southernmost known Kuikuru settlement, where he settled and apparently still lives today.

Now, I'm hardly one to dismiss legends as having no explanatory merit, but I can't help feeling like there's something more to the ditches than being created by a pointy-legged village-maker. And many anthropologists agree.
One alternate explanation that was proposed linked the trenches to the region's peccary problem--that because the crafty peccaries were consistently finding ways to bypass the fences that the Kuikuru had constructed around their manioc gardens, the Kuikuru resorted to building ditches to trap the unwary peccaries.

  Prized, tasty manioc 

 

          +

Aww, look, a hungry peccary. How cute!

=  PROBLEM!               




That brings us to...

Hypothesis 1: The trenches were constructed as traps for peccaries

However, there are a few wrinkles in this theory. For one, building these trenches would have been no small business--some have been recorded to be as deep as 17 feet, and 3 feet across! That would have been a substantial undertaking--would the peccary protection be worth all of that effort? 17 feet is quite deep, and kind of overkill. 
Hypothesis 1: The trenches were constructed as traps for peccaries

The end result does not merit such a time-/energy-consuming effort. REJECTED.

I think we can put this hypothesis on the back-burner and investigate the region a little more to see what else we can come up with. 

Mike Heckenberger has done extensive excavation and mapping of these regions, which he shares with us in his book The Ecology of Power. 

This is the Kuikuru settlement region of the UX that we're looking at (page 70):



 The three numbers with the red squares around them (X6: Nokugu, X13: Heulugihïtï, X11: Kuhikugu) are the three sites at which Heckenberger conducted the most fieldwork. That dark black squiggle that runs from the northwest part of the image to the southeast is the Culuene River. Back in the day (we're talking way back, like,1200s a.d.) the Culuene was essentially the divide between two cultures, the Arawaks and the Caribs. These tribes both inhabited the Upper Xingu region, but settled on different sides of the Culuene (Arawaks on the west, and Caribs on the east) and developed their own cultures, which we'll talk more about later.

The Kuikuru are descendants of the Caribs, which is why there is a red circle around X14: Tehukugu--one of the oldest known Carib settlements in this region.

X41: Itsagahïtï also has a red circle around it because archaeologists can't definitively determine whether its ruins represent the Arawak culture (aka "Western Complex") or the Carib culture (aka "Eastern Complex"). Evidence is scarce, and thus inconclusive.

Now, for the interesting part.

 When analyzing the ditches, Heckenberger noticed that there seemed to be some correlations between the ditches and the water source of each settlement: in almost every instance where there were ditches, they were arranged so that they arced around the occupational part of the settlement, beginning and ending at the water source. This close association was pounced on by those who had suggested the ditches were intended to have an irrigation function.

Hypothesis 2: The ditches were constructed as part of an irrigation system.

But one (significant) detail didn't add up--the ends of the ditches that bordered the water source lay far beyond the high-tide mark of the bodies of water. The trenches were way too far away for them to ever be filled up! Now, perhaps the groups had engineered some sort of ancient water-getting system that channeled water into the ditches and we simply have no record of it. That would make this hypothesis possible--but not probable. Since we have no evidence (physical or part of oral history) of such a machine, we're going to need to put this hypothesis aside.

So we've discarded the "peccary trap" and the "irrigation system" hypotheses.
What are we left with?

Let's re-examine Heckenberger's map of the region (page 70):

This time, the sites that are circled are those that supposedly exhibit peripheral ditches (PDs)--the ditches that completely encircle the village occupation area, described by Heckenberger as "semi-lunar." (X13: Heulugihïtï, for instance, features 3 ditches, but they are tiny and do not circumscribe anything. Because the ditches of X13: Heulugihïtï deviate so drastically from the observed norm, it would not be accurate to assume that their purposes were the same, and thus our focus will be primarily on the large trenches that surround the villages).

This list of PD sites includes:

X6: Nokugu

X18: Akagahïtï

X11: Kuhikugu

X17: Hatsikugi

X40: Sekuhai [Heckenberger has not actually examined the PDs at this site; knowledge of their existence comes only from modern Kuikuru testimonies. Since their presence cannot be concretely confirmed by Heckenberger himself, we will not include this site in our analysis.]

What is interesting to note is that these sites featuring PDs are also those that, based on Heckenberger's excavations, happened to be the major residential centers of this region. Which means there would be a lot of people living there. Also, based on Heckenberger's discovery of specialized structures (i.e. buildings whose blueprints were upgraded) at X18: Akagahïtï plus remnants of complex road systems and sprawling central plazas that go above and beyond similar organization at the other sites, it can be inferred that some pretty important people lived at these sites enclosed by PDs. (Maybe even chiefs! Let's remember this for later when we evaluate evidence in favor of/against the presence of a chiefdom in this area.)

Usually where there are important people (or things), there are also certain developments of security.

17-foot deep trenches would make a pretty good defensive strategy, don't you think? Especially if the threat were a bit more menacing than hungry peccaries, like, say, hostile humans.

This leads us to...

Hypothesis 3: Trenches were constructed to protect villages from human attack.

Here's an example of such a formation, observed by Heckenberger at X18: Akagahïtï (page 94):

The dark, solid black lines represent the trenches.

The other vein-y lines that look like roads represent, well, roads. And the giant circle you see in the center represents a central plaza. Upon excavation, Heckenberger found the foundations of two circular settlements in the area indicated by my faintly drawn square (one of which is the specialized structure that I mentioned him citing earlier!).

The open area to the northeast is where the Ipatse Stream runs by the settlement. Though it is not depicted in this GPS plan that Heckenberger offers, the stream would run right by each of the end points of these ditches, effectively serving as the final (and natural) piece of the barrier. The plaza and the settlements, then, would be safely encircled by the trench-water combo.


 

Here's a copy of Heckenberger's map of X11: Kuhikugu (page 99):

This site actually had two ditches.

As you can see, there is a ditch that I've colored red which runs along the interior, as well as an external ditch. It is this external--or peripheral, as Heckenberger uses--ditch that runs essentially from bank to bank around X11: Kuhikugu.

This settlement, X11: Kuhikugu, is the same, old settlement that we discussed earlier when recounting the legend of Fitsi-fitsi. The southern end of the ditch is where, according to Kuikuru legend, Fitsi-fitsi still lives.

Finally, X6: Nokugu is the site that Heckenberger spent the most time analyzing, and thus will be the site that we'll consider most closely (since there is an abundance of data) (page 82):

Heckenberger has spent a lot of time conducting soil samples, and from these stratigraphic tests has been able to give 900 a.d. as an estimated year for the beginning of a settlement in Nokugu. Since there are no records of permanent Carib settlements west of the Culuene River until 1770 or so, it is likely that the Arawaks were the initiators of this occupation. As you can see, there are three concentric ditches here (weird!!!).

 We'll explore the implication of the trio later, but for now let's focus on the dates of each one. Normally I would have us start with the smallest ditch, ditch 3, the most interior one. However, Heckenberger was not able to get a clear reading on its age, and is in the process of re-dating it. So we move to ditch 2, the middle ditch! Radiocarbon dating puts the construction of ditch 2 somewhere in the range of 950 a.d. - 1210. Thus, not only were the Arawaks the initiators of the occupation of X6: Nokugu, it was the Arawaks who presumably built the ditches as well.

Finally, for the most peripheral and all-encompassing of the trenches, ditch 1. Here's a picture (page 85):

According to soil samples as well as dates collected from pottery shards found in the ditch, ditch 1 was constructed around 1290 a.d., +/- 70 years.

It measures about 17 feet deep, and a little over 3 feet wide. That's a pretty substantial undertaking!

 Pretty deep, huh? Once the majority of anthropologists had focused on considering warfare/defensive purposes to provide a motive for the construction of the ditches, the question "Defense from whom?" After all, if it happened that there was no one from whom the tribe would need to protect themselves, taking all that time and effort to build such a ditch would be pretty pointless, right? To fill in that hole in the argument, then, we need to assess the potential threats in the area.

I think we've analyzed enough evidence for one post, and we've established that the defensive purposes of the ditches espoused by Hypothesis 3 appear to be the most viable motive behind their construction.

Next we'll consider the potential suspects. Could the Arawaks have been guarding themselves from wild indian attacks? Were the Carib groups based to the east of the Culuene River the threat? Was it the Tupian-Gê tribes? Or could it have been inter-tribe hostility?
It's back to the books to find out!

Stay tuned!

Into the Thick of It

After almost a week and a half of vacation, Dr. Carneiro has returned! While he was gone I was very busy reading (see a brief bibliography below!) and taking notes. Now that I've had the opportunity to clarify a few facts with Dr. Carneiro (and rest my hand a bit!), let me fill you in on what I've learned...

As the case stands, we have two objectives:
1.) Defining and explaining the general transition from "tribe" to "chiefdom."
2.) Assessing whether or not the Kuikuru group in the Upper Xingu (UX) region of Brazil (map!) can be characterized as a "chiefdom."

Already after this past week's readings and discussion with Dr. Carneiro, we need to modify the second point. Currently, (as well as in the 1950s when Dr. Carneiro launched the first intensive fieldwork undertaking with this group) the Kuikuru do not comprise a chiefdom based on a virtually undisputed quality of chiefdoms: a large population. Indeed, chiefdoms generally range between 1,000 and 3,000 inhabitants. The current Kuikuru group has maybe 30. "Tribe." 
That revelation might seem to deflate our entire investigation--but it doesn't! It only makes our detective work more interesting. You see, the major work that we'll be considering in this investigation, Mike Heckenberger's The Ecology of Power, is a recount and analysis of Heckenberger's recent archaeological findings when he conducted fieldwork in the UX. I'm a little over a third of the way through his book (page 134 out of 347--not bad, right?) and already I have come across several instances in the text where Heckenberger introduces archaeological evidence that, he explains, suggests a civilization that was far larger and more complex than that in which the Kuikuru are currently participating. So really, then, our second point of inquiry becomes:
2.) Assessing whether or not the social organization of the ancient Kuikuru group can be described as a chiefdom.

OK! Now that that's cleared up, let's revisit the first point, because I sure have learned a lot about that! (For convenience's sake, let's put important pieces of information in this color.)

The first definition of a chiefdom comes from Kalervo Oberg in 1955--multiple villages united under the leader of one chief (484). The articles by Dr. Carneiro are very helpful in further defining what exactly we should consider as indicative of a chiefdom. In his "What Happened at the Flashpoint?" article, the "flashpoint" refers to that period of transition between "Tribe" and "Chiefdom." He points out that chiefdom have evolved independently of each other in countries across the globe, so there must be some common basic factors, right? We have already discussed the importance of population in the differentiation between "tribe" and "chiefdom"--in a "chiefdom," we're looking at a median of 1,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. With a group this large, then, it would not be out-of-the-question for some sort of social structure to emerge. And indeed, Dr. Carneiro, along with many other prominent anthropologists (especially Morton Fried) have cited the presence of ranking as an "all-but-universal feature of the chiefdom" ("Flashpoint" 20). Now, it is in this article that Dr. Carneiro most fully addresses the role of ranking in chiefdoms, and he posits that any initial ranking system is most likely derived from a person's contribution in establishing the chiefdom (also page 20). Which makes sense. I mean, it's only logical that if someone really pulls all the stops to organize a functional chiefdom, their inputs are viewed as slightly more important when it comes to making group decisions.

OK, so initial chiefs or those who hold a lot of sway are going to be those who took the most action in forming the chiefdom. But...what kind of action would that be?
Let's investigate the written sources even further. Almost 30 years before he emphasized this hierarchy in his "Flashpoint" article, Dr. Carneiro, in "A Theory of the Origin of the State," made a connection between expansion efforts and the need for war-savy leaders--perhaps those very same leaders that would yield great contributions to the founding of the chiefdom! When a group grows, it is necessarily both a physical growth in the population as well as a growth in spatial occupation--more people means more space needed! And we can only imagine the dog-eat-dog world that must emerge if several neighboring groups are trying to expand around the same type. After all, there's only so much space!

Or is there? Both the "State" and "Flashpoint" articles call for an extra-careful consideration of the surrounding environment of the group in question. In this area, there are three factors to consider: Environment Circumscription, Resource Concentration, and Social Conscription.
Environment Circumscription refers to a limit of suitable land for settlement. Theoretically, if there is high environment circumscription there wouldn't really be enough land to go around, and if you had a bunch of groups with burgeoning populations trying to acquire more and more land to accommodate everyone, things would get ugly. However, as Dr. Carneiro explains on page 735 of the "State" article, in the UX, virtually all the land is agriculturally friendly, and there is enough space for the villages to be numerous, yet widely dispersed. So there shouldn't have been much competition...unless we consider the second factor.
Resource Concentration refers to, well, the concentration of resources in an area. Like hitting the agricultual jackpot! Because let's face it, not all the land is equally fertile, and the good stuff is worth fighting for...literally. This goes hand-in-hand with the third and last phenomena:
Population Conscription refers to how densely packed people are in a region. In areas of high resource concentration, there will logically be more people. Flock to the good stuff, right? Then, as competitions for space on this choice land emerge between these separate groups, battles break out. Eventually, someone wins, and someone loses, and the land rights have been decided (at least for the moment!) In some cases, Dr. Carneiro points out, the losers might retreat altogether and forfeit any presence on the land. But sometimes the resources might be so appealing that the losing group would be forced the forfeit their autonomy and accept the leadership of the winning group.

To arrive at the point where groups would need to battle each other for space, they would probably already be large. That's part of what the "population conscription" theory implies (chiefdom vs. chiefdom, as opposed to a bunch of small tribes squabbling over an area--working out some sort of peace in that instance would be highly unlikely.) And this is where the ranking component comes in: There would be leaders (or at the very least a chief) to guide the war efforts, so already social distinctions would be made. But where in the social structure do the people that belonged to the losing group fit? It is hard to imagine that even the Average Joes of the winning group would consider themselves on the same level as those in the group that their warriors just dominated. No, a lower rung would need to be added, especially if prisoners of war were used as slaves and exploited for labor. Thus, the ranking system would expand.

The chiefdom we have just constructed is a basic one: In response to competition for the best land and resources, one group will rise above and secure its position of titleship. It's population will be free to further expand, and if the winning group didn't feature a cluster of villages over which one leader held power, it sure would now! This is a hypothesis that is very much in line with the first of the two camps of thought that I addressed in the previous post. Heckenberger adopts the other side, arguing against environmental determinism in favor of a more spiritually driven evolution. Quoting Turner, another anthropologist of this persuasion, asserts that "political power is always dependent on ritual" (26). Furthermore, while he, like Dr. Carneiro, strongly acknowledges a basic ranking system of at least chief/commoner, he argues that the power that the leaders have is based on "sacred authority" (72)--a nod from the gods, if you will. And while this may be the case, one has to wonder why certain gods were made important, and what criteria they might use to select the leaders. I would hypothesize that these higher spiritual beings are particularly important because of the strength they yield during times of great trial. The most crucial of which, I would further hypothesize, would be instances of war, whether offensive or defensive. This will definitely be an area that we have to address if we want to make a strong case for the influence of war in prompting the rise of chiefdoms--the theory I am most in favor of. What did the gods mean to the early Kuikuru, and how could this be linked to their social evolution?

So, that's a lot of information to absorb! Let's take the night to let it sink in, and tomorrow we'll see how we can apply it to the UX in particular. I promise the next post will have lots of cool pictures so we can start visualizing how these theories actually play out! (As with everything, we have to cover the nitty-gritty theoretical bases before we can get to the fun application part, right?) A large portion of Heckenberger's book is dedicated to recounting his archaeological finds--just the kind of evidence we need to sort through these ideas!
Stay tuned, detectives!
 
Brief Bibliography
Carneiro, Robert L. "A Theory of the Origin of the State." Science. 169. 21 Aug 1970. 733-738.

Carneiro, Robert L. "Godzilla Meets New Age Anthropology: Facing the Post-Modernist Challenge to a Science of Culture." Europaea. Ed. Giulio Angioni. Italy, 1995. 3-19.

Carneiro, Robert L. "The Nature of the Chiefdom as Revealed by Evidence from the Cauca Valley of Colombia." Profiles in Cultural Evolution. Eds. A. Terry Rambo and Kathleen Gillogly. University of Michigan Museum, 1991. 167-190.

Carneiro, Robert L. "What Happened at the Flashpoint?" Chiefdoms and Chieftancy in the Americas. Ed. Elsa M. Redmond. University Press of FL: Miami, 1998. 18-42.

Heckenberger, Michael. The Ecology of Power. Routledge: New York, 2005.