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The thesis of this book is that Hawai'i consisted of three to four competing archaic states, each headed by a divine king. Hawai'i offers a “model system” for how differences in rank originally dictated by kinship gave way to a durable inequality legitimated in new cosmogonic and religious ideologies, how control over the means of production passed from the domestic to political economies, and, ultimately, how chiefs became kings. This chapter uses a comparative ethnographic and linguistic approach to situate Hawai'i within its broader Polynesian context. The controlled linguistic analysis reveals that Hawai'i does not conform to the patterns typical of other Polynesian chiefdoms, that it had been transformed into something qualitatively different by the time of contact with the West. An overview of the chapters included in the book is provided.

This chapter reviews the contours of the Hawaiian archaic states which were functioning at the time of first contact with the West, and then investigates the major categories held to be criterial for archaic states, and the hypothesis that the contact-era Hawaiian polities are properly conceived of as states, rather than as chiefdoms. Contact-era Hawai'i was a true class society, a trait that puts it squarely in the realm of early archaic states, as opposed to chiefdoms. The Hawaiian economic system had elements of both “staple” and “wealth” finance to it. Furthermore, the chapter explores the functions of the kahuna pule and their principal cults, both in legitimating the divine kingship, and in serving the political and economic interests of the king and the ali'i class. Hawaiian social organization exhibits a key axis of the transformation from chiefdom to archaic state.

This chapter presents an explanatory model of cultural change in Hawai'i. It also argues that any compelling theory of change must attend to both ultimate and proximate causations, to long-term context and process, and to short-term dynamism and agency. The work of four scholars has been particularly influential in Hawaiian cultural change: Irving Goldman, Marshall Sahlins, Robert Hommon, and Timothy Earle. They have all drawn attention to elements of the Hawaiian case that are important in constructing a robust explanatory model of the emergence of archaic states. It is shown that the intertwined linkages between land, population, agriculture, and surplus provide one set of dynamic, long-term causal factors which are essential to explaining the emergence of Hawaiian archaic states. Chiefs did not become kings solely through increasing their extraction of surplus, or by taking direct control over land allocation.

This chapter focuses on Tiwanaku, the first state in the Titicaca Basin region. In the seventh century ad Tiwanaku represented the first fully developed archaic state in the Titicaca Basin. It expanded rapidly after the collapse of Pucara in 400 ad Tiwanaku incorporated or added several areas to its territories and by 800–900 ad, it dominated a large area across the south-central Andes. By 1100 ad, Tiwanaku had declined as a regional power, a process that set the cultural stage for the rise of the Aymara señoríos.

This chapter sets forth the case that Hawaiʻi had the necessary food surpluses to form complex states, and then compares several theories developed to explain state formation in Hawaiʻi during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A central question considered is why Hawaiian states were simultaneously fragile enough to have frequent usurpation while durable enough to support large military invasions across the ocean channels separating the Hawaiian islands. The chapter concludes by briefly considering advantages that states on the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi had been accumulating in the 100–150 years prior to the late eighteenth-century European voyages that brought foreigners, diseases, trade, and Western ideas to Hawaiʻi.

This chapter describes a re-engagement with Hawaiian archaeology through research efforts in Kahikinui, one of the twelve ancient districts (moku) of Maui. Some might have thought Kahikinui an odd choice in which to investigate the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawai‘i, as it is considered a kua‘āina, or “backwater” district (literally “back of the land”). Yet it proved to be the right place to investigate the rise of archaic states in ancient Hawai‘i. Being ecologically marginal Kahikinui had not suffered from the effects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century land development; the archaeological landscape of an entire moku, or district, was intact. More importantly, the radical shifts in economic production, land tenure, religious organization, and social structure that accompanied the transition to archaic states would likely be reflected more clearly in such outlying kua‘āina lands than in the “salubrious core regions” frequented by the chiefs.

This chapter explores how two contemporary and culturally related archaic states, Pylos and Mycenae, manipulated ritual to communicate and create status. By exploring the evidence for rituals in these two Greek Bronze Age states, I illustrate that although each was using ritual to express and confirm the elevated status and identities of their elites, both states used different types of ritual to achieve this. In the final periods of the palace’s use, Pylos’s architectural similarity to Mycenae increased, yet it began to differ in its use and location of ritual. As the state of Pylos grew in size, status, and power, it deemphasized burial rituals in favor of palace-based rituals, such as feasting and the making of sacrifices in the palace’s most elaborately decorated room. By contrast, Mycenae continued to invest significant labor and wealth in its burials while also reserving areas such as the cult center for ritual use and for conducting large-scale feasts. Chapter 3 highlights the need for and value of detailed contextual analysis of individual states in any society in order to clarify the reasons behind their similarities and differences.

In addition to understanding small-scale societies in their own right "from a complex systems perspective" (Boekhorst and Hemelrijk this volume), workshop participants expressed a goal of using insights about the dynamics of small-scale societies to better understand the "evolution of state-like structures" (Small this volume), or "the 'emergence' trajectories by which a smallscale society, in its environment, may move autonomously from relatively simple (distributed, no ranking or centralized decision making) to complex (ranking/hierarchy, with centralized decision making and a degree of specialization)" (Doran this volume). Small-scale societies are seen as "preceding conditions" to the development of "rank vs. egalitarian ideologies" (Wright this volume) such as are found in archaic states. Ancient Egypt is a salient example of such an archaic state. In the comparative study of civilizations, ancient Egypt has stood out as the quintessence of a centralized nation-state ruling a large territory. Egyptologists often operate through a vision of ancient Egyptian society, whether explicit or assumed, as highly absolutist. Pharaoh's control of society is complete, effected through an invasive and pervasive centralized bureaucracy. Anthropologists, taking their cue from Egyptologists, see Egypt as one of the earliest examples of a unified nation-state, with a redistributive economy centrally administered over the entirety of the Egyptian Nile Valley. I offer a prospectus for approaching Egyptian civilization as a complex adaptive system (CAS) based on loose analogies with concepts of emergent order and self-organization. This a narrative exploration of ways that ancient Egyptian society may be amenable to the kind of agent-based modeling applied to small-scale societies. Although I recognize that in discussions of "complexity theory" there is nothing close to unanimity or an agreed paradigm (Wilson 1998), some of the more general concepts may at least offer insightful new ways to view social complexity in Egypt. My prospectus is a workin- progress. My sources for complex systems studies are "the literature of metaphor (e.g., Cowan et al. 1994), and the popularizations of metaphysics"; that is to say, what follows is most certainly in Morowitz's (1998) category of meta-metaphor (and I will try to refrain from "word magic").

The discussion chapter contextualizes the essays in this volume on the scholarship of ritual and archaic states. It highlights the importance of ritual as an inherent part of a cultural narrative in past and present societies alike, and how, by studying ritual and its relationship to cultural practices and social organization, we can better understand diverse social groups. The review of the chapters stresses how the authors provide a variety of methodological and interpretive tools. These include the cautious use of ethnographic and ethnohistorical analogy, phenomenological recreations–based universals of human perception and movement, and minute analysis of the discards of ritual and performances, from trash to valued items placed with the deceased.

Humans have a very short history in Hawaiʻi. The Hawaiian archipelago was the last major land area on the planet to be settled when Polynesians traveled over 2,000 miles north to the islands about 750–850 years ago. This chapter provides an overview of the topics covered by the book and the linkages between the past and present in Hawai‘i’s political history. Small, resource-rich chiefdoms, each supported by a state religion, merged into larger states and competed with one another for the next 350–400 years to control more territory and people within the eight major Hawaiian islands. In these well-organized states, property rights in land were well specified and enforced, and a system of post-harvest taxation facilitated risk sharing and mobilization of state resources for war. We see these well-functioning institutions mirrored in today’s sophisticated political institutions and high living standards. Three more general features of Hawai‘i’s past political institutions have persisted into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: relatively centralized political institutions, use of land redistribution as a mechanism to form and preserve ruling political coalitions, and pathways to establishing more independent societies.

This chapter provides a theoretical background to archaeological theories regarding the origins of complex societies and ancient states. Most theories can be very generally grouped into a few overall categories. In one category, researchers stress the importance of physical power, coercion, conflict, and warfare for the emergence of sociopolitical complexity. In contrast, researchers in a second category follow a managerial perspective on complexity, placing greater emphasis on peaceful, voluntary, and cooperative models. Thirdly, other scholars blur the lines between these traditions, employing a blend of interpretive frameworks. As part of this review and evaluation, I will highlight research and evidence offered by proponents of various schools of thought, presenting a brief literature survey underscoring the pathways by which highly complex societies are thought to have emerged.

This chapter chronicles fieldwork focusing on the intensive dryland agriculture that had underwritten the staple economies of the emerging archaic states of Hawai‘i and Maui Islands in the centuries leading up to European contact. With a generous budget of $1.4 million granted by the National Science Foundation and a multidisciplinary team of scientists, the author set out to prove how Hawai‘i acted as a kind of “model system” for investigating linkages among population, land, intensive agriculture, and sociopolitical organization. The processes that had driven intensification and sociopolitical change in ancient Hawai‘i might be broadly applicable to many other parts of the world. In short, Hawai‘i was a microcosm of the world.

This chapter first delves into excavations at Nu‘u Bay in Kaupō, before reflecting on the author's book, How Chiefs Became Kings (2010). Kaupō, today a sleepy ranching community, was one of twelve districts (moku) of Maui's ancient kingdom. Around A.D. 1710, almost seven decades before British captain James Cook broke the sea barrier that had isolated the Hawaiian archipelago from the rest of the world, Kaupō was the royal seat of King Kekaulike. Revered to this day by Hawaiians on Maui, Kekaulike was a descendant of the great Pi‘ilani, who first unified the island kingdom around A.D. 1570. A survey on Kekaulike's life paves the way for reflections on the shift from complex chiefdom to archaic state in Hawaiian society, which is explored in the book, How Chiefs Became Kings.

Chapter 4 focuses on the ritual practices connected with the burials at the Late Bronze Age cemetery at Dendra in the Argolid in Greece, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. During this time, the central Argolid became an archaic state with a pronounced site hierarchy, with Mycenae at the top. In the settling process of this power structure, the various practices, including mortuary ritual, were characterized by competition and the negotiation of sociopolitical positions. Part of the material evidence connected with mortuary practices at the Dendra site and its surrounds is used in Schallin’s analysis of the components of the rituals as she proposes a possible scenario of how the burial practices were materialized at Dendra and how they can be seen as a constituent part in the strategies of elite legitimation. In short, Schallin examines material evidence to identify various components in the mortuary ritual at the Dendra cemetery while suggesting how this ritual linked with the network-type political system at Mycenae.