Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California: 8 (Origins of Human Behavior and Culture) - Hardcover

Bettinger, Robert L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520283333 ISBN 13: 9780520283336

Publisher: California University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Orderly Anarchy delivers a provocative and innovative reexamination of sociopolitical evolution among Native American groups in California, a region known for its wealth of prehistoric languages, populations, and cultural adaptations. Scholars have tended to emphasize the development of social complexity and inequality to explain this diversity. Robert L. Bettinger argues instead that "orderly anarchy," the emergence of small, autonomous groups, provided a crucial strategy in social organization. Drawing on ethnographic and archaeological data and evolutionary, economic, and anthropological theory, he shows that these small groups devised diverse solutions to environmental, technological, and social obstacles to the intensified use of resources. This book revises our understanding of how California became the most densely populated landscape in aboriginal North America.

About this title

Review:

"Well written, tightly reasoned, and intellectually stimulating."--American Anthropologist

"Extraordinary and orginial . . . A terrific book!"-- (09/01/2015)

About the Author:

Robert L. Bettinger, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, is an authority on ethnographic and archaeological hunter-gatherers and the author of Hunter-Gatherers: Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory, Hunter-Gatherer Foraging: Five Simple Models, and many peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles. He is also the recipient of the Society for American Archaeology Award for Excellence in Archaeological Analysis and the Society for California Archaeology M. A. Baumhoff Special Achievement Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: California University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0520283333
• ISBN 13: 9780520283336
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312