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.

Making Sherlock Proud

The Case of the Chiefdom Challenge
in the Upper Xingu
     So as I mentioned in the previous post, my AMNH internship experience will take the form of a detective case!
Now, let's get some background information.

     The matter at hand is two-fold:
First, it concerns the historic difficulty in defining and explaining the transition to a chiefdom, from an anthropological perspective.
Second, it concerns the presence of a chiefdom among a group of people in particular:

the Kuikuru group, which inhabits the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon.

     With regard to the first part of our mystery, we must consider the gray areas when it comes to understanding chiefdoms. The idea of a chiefdom was introduced in the mid 1900s by a social scientist named Kalervo Oberg. He proposed this term in 1955, basically outlining a "chiefdom" as a group of villages united under the leadership of one central ruler. Its population is usually around 2000 people, though this is by no means a make-it-or-break-it stipulation. The chiefdom buzz picked up, and in 1962 another social scientist, Elman Service, proposed that a chiefdom was actually the third of four stages of a social evolutionary sequence:

 Band --> Tribe --> Chiefdom --> State

 So we had more context for a chiefdom--great! But the sloth-like speed of theoretically outlining what comprises a chiefdom (at least among English-speaking social scientists; apparently well before we had even decided on what "chiefdom" would mean, there were already 3 different Spanish words to describe this same concept: señorio, casicazgo, and capitanío. And until a little over 50 years ago, the English language officially had none...right.) should been some indication of how tricky it would be to actually decide on what populations qualify as "chiefdoms." Because let me tell you, it seems to be pretty gosh darn difficult. Sure, for the most part everyone agrees that chiefdoms are a group of communities ruled by a central leader, but the real debate lies with Service's evolutionary sequence: WHY do chiefdoms emerge? What causes the progression from "tribe" to "chiefdom"?

 

     Especially tricky to understand is the fact that in order to progress to "chiefdom," multiple tribes would have to forfeit their autonomy in favor of being led by one ruler. That's like finally scoring a monopoly on, like, the best chocolate in the whole town and then giving it up to Mr. Willy Wonka wannabe in the next coutny over. I mean, no one would voluntarily do that--or would they? So here we are with chiefdoms: We've got these tribes, you know, chilling, and then later we've got chiefdoms. Now, the chiefdom process is by no means a quick one--some formations have been estimated as spanning a millenia! But what factors would guide this change?

     Anthropologists are staunchly divided into two camps with regard to this issue. On one side fall those who propose an impetus characterized by environmental features and warfare. The geography of a region might limit the amount of ideal agricultural land, and as populations increase, so too does the pressure to score acces to the prime real estate. Warfare ensues, the strongest prevails, and the losers--not being able to run away due to the already dense population and limited space--agree to let the winners be in charge. Chiefdom.
However, on the other side fall those who suggest that the transition was based more on voluntary submission, as opposed to coercion. They suggest that instead of giving so much weight to theories of environmental determinism, anthropologists should consider motives that are more based on the individuals as human beings. Ancestral heritage and a connection with the gods might have lead tribes to be more willing to submit to another ruler if this leader was viewed as being holier, or as having a direct "blessing" of governance from the gods.

     As you can imagine, there aren't a whole lot of obvious ways that the differences between these two sides can be reconciled, which means it's up to us! No pressure. What will help us make sense of this issue, (aside from reading what different anthropologists have to say about it which, believe me, I've already begun doing) is conducting a case study. That's where the second part of this case comes in--we're going to go (theoretically) right to the Kuikuru in the Upper Xingu (UX) and examine for ourselves the environment (to satisfy the first group) as well as the social culture (which also relates to the first camp as it regards to warfare, but will also hopefully placate the second group as we search for evidence of religious devotion).

     Conveniently enough, the curator who is supervising my research--Dr. Robert Carneiro--has conducted extensive fieldwork in the UX. He also happens to fall with the first group of anthropologists, so he has collected extensive details about--including photos of--the landscape of the UX region. One intriguing detail he came across in particular are the inexplicable presence of a pair of massive trenches. These gaping holes apparently span 12-15', and are just about as deep. They have been there for as long as the Kuikuru can remember, but no one has any recollection of how they came to be--among themselves, they attribute their creation to the god Fitsi-fitsi. "Natural formation" was ruled out because--get this--sharpened stakes were observed, vertically affixed to the bottom of the trenches. Nice, huh? Dr. Carneiro was able to examine them first-hand, as well as their context. He came up with two possible theories (in addition to the group's own Fitsifitsi explanation): 1) The trenches were a defensive tactic to assist the Kuikuru in warfare with enemy groups or wild indigenous peoples. 2) They were a trap for peccaries:

This area has a significant "infestation" problem with these piglike animals.

      They had an insatiable appetite for the manioc that the Kuikuru grow, and they would go as far as burrowing under fences that had been erected to keep the peccaries out to get to the crops. Once they had access to the manioc, they were like one-man eating machines and would just mow down the vegetation. Since manioc is a large part of the Kuikuru diet, this constant menace was, needless to say, of great concern.
But the problem remains that, as of yet, no evidence has been offered to support either of these theories. We'll see if we can help that!

     So I think that does it for the introduction to the case. Basically it comes down to this:
We know the Who: the Kuikuru; and we know the Where: the Upper Xingu region. But here's what remains a mystery:

Why do chiefdoms arise in general?

What factors prompt this social evolution, particularly in the case of the Kuikuru?

To what extent does the environment trigger the change?

How do tribes' spiritual orientations factor in?

How do we prove this?

And what in the world do those trenches mean?

     Dr. Carneiro has given me several of his articles to read to kick off this investigation, as well as a book that adopts the other side of this issue, the individual/spiritual perspective. I'll start reading these and we'll reconvene at the end of the week!

The Internship (and the Mystery!) Begins

I thought it might be awkward to kick off the blog by saying "Hi, I'm AJ, and WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I'm interning at the American Museum of Natural History this summer, and through this blog you're going to experience it with me! We're going to be detectives."
I don't know, it just seemed too sudden to me, like there was no transition. That's why I made the first post. But really, that post has nothing to do with the immediate purpose of the blog. I mean, sure, a little background is good (thumbs-up for contextualizing! Although I suppose an "About" section could achieve this just as well...) but this blog isn't just going to be composed of a series of posts featuring me talking about my life.
Au contraire. This blog is a man with a plan.
And yes, this plan has to deal with my summer internship in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. Here, I'm conducting research with the curator emeritus of South American Ethnology. Now, because he's retired (hence the "emeritus," apparently) he had asked if I would be game for a more independent internship design so that he could still do what he wanted to do with his retirement. Of course, I was thrilled for any internship opportunity at the AMNH, so this was not a problem at all. Plus, this guy has definitely earned it--he held his curatorial position here almost longer than my parents had been alive. Really, he's a legend!
But this blog also isn't going to be just a series of posts telling you about what I'm doing. Oh no. It's going to be a detective case! I'll tell you about my research assignment--the case--and what I have to be able to explain by the end of my internship (the last week of July)--the mystery. Then we'll form a hypothesis or two that we'll test throughout the research process--the investigation!
So if the shadowy unknown of the jungles of the Amazon Rainforest, the (as-of-yet) unexplained presence of deep crevices in the ground, and a tribe with an ancient--yet undeciphered--past make you curious, (which they definitely should!) make sure you stay "in the know" and follow my blog!

Life: It's happening

So growing up is weird.

I definitely don't feel like I should be able to answer the question: "So what are you studying?" which, as we all know, really reads: "So what are you doing right now to make sure that in the near future (and for the rest of your life) you'll obtain a respectable job and a stable source of income?" Of course, being in high school affords you with an automatic shield, an immunity to being asked this, or to being expected to answer. But the minute you move on, you're fair game for "That Question."
At first, I had to find some way to explain that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to be doing next year (let alone for the rest of my life!) without sounding like a bum. And I got pretty good at doing that. Then I stumbled across it--my passion! South American Anthropology! It definitely didn't hit me all at once, but relatively quickly I found myself actually being able to give a more concrete answer to "That Question." Which, along with realizing that I was growing up, was also weird.

Here's what I got:
"Right now I'm studying Spanish, Anthropology, and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies. After Dickinson I'll probably end up going to graduate school, because what I REALLY want to do is eventually travel to South America and live with an indigenous tribe in the Amazon for a year or so to see how their lifestyles have changed over time, and what traditions they've maintained or abandoned."

It sounded cool to me, and I was super-stoked not only to be able to identify my passion, but to finally be able to offer some sort of long-term plan on cue. A defense against awkward small-talk, right? It certainly felt like an accomplishment! But, weirdly enough, the reactions I got bordered on dissatisfied: apparently I still came across as a bum. This was confusing, because hadn't I given them an actual answer this time? Weren't they looking to hear my long-term plan? Was what I had given them not long-term enough? I debated throwing in a summary of the beneficiaries that I would eventually include in my will--I figured that maybe this would not only give the nay-sayers the concrete details they were looking for, but would also demonstrate impressive foresight on my part. Then I thought they might be offended if their names weren't included (which, after scoffing at my life goals, they might as well just have counted themselves out). So I scratched that idea and settled for telling myself that, hey, I liked where I was headed. And for the Debbie Downers? Frankly I was (and am!) too excited about it to really care.

Over time, I made more life goals for myself--where I wanted to study abroad (Peru in the fall, Bolivia in the spring!), what I want to do while I'm there (study how globalization has impacted indigenous peoples and their customs!), what I wanted to write my senior theses on (a comparative assessment of my abroad fieldwork!)--and I was able to tack them onto my initial response to "That Question."
Then things actually started happening, which, out of all the weird transitions that I'd had to go through up until that point, definitely took the cake. I'm actually going abroad for two semesters (to the woman who asked me if Peru was even "abroad," yes, actually, it is.). I'm doing some pre-research for the fieldwork I'll be doing while I'm down there through an Independent Study course with one of my advisors. And I've just started my dream internship at the American Museum of Natural History where I'll be conducting research about a different Amazonian population under one of the most prominent South American Ethnologists in modern Anthropology! With this internship, then, comes a school project: blogging about it! Which is weird. Blogs, I mean. And that I have one, and that I'll be writing about my internship on it. Doubly weird. And an even weirder thought struck me when I was trying to pick out the title--it would have to be a versatile one, because I'd need to use this blog while I'm abroad in the fall and spring.
Which is soon.   <-- Very surreal realization.

It dawned on me that everything seems to be falling into place--life is happening! And for sure, some people are still taken aback when I mention what I want to do with my life, but I've come to realize that it's less that they disapprove and more that it's just not what they were expecting to hear. And I mean, I guess I can see their point--as one of my friends pointed out, living with an indigenous tribe in the mountains isn't exactly a 9-5 office job. Or being a dentist. Some people accept this departure from "traditional" careers, which is where the first part of the title for this blog comes in: I was in Spain for a month last summer, and I was explaining my studies to a group of wonderfully charming old jabegas-rowing men (jabegas are a kind of boat powered by 5 or 6 rowers). They didn't really get why I would want to subject myself to a year of living conditions that would make a house from the Medieval period look like the Hotel Málaga Palacio, but they offered encouraging comments and even the titles of some books that might be of interest to me! And as we rowed, sometimes they would forget my name, so they would just shout "¡Ey, Antropóloga!" instead ("Antropóloga" = "Female Anthropologist"). It was endearing, and made me smile! Even though what I wanted to do wasn't their cup of tea, they went with it.

But to the Debbie Downers of the world, you're right, it's not exactly the most "normal" career path, but I like to think I'm taking the road less traveled (haha, blog subtitle tie-in!), and I'm cool with that. And I'll send you the pictures.