LISS.398A TECHNOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT and HUMAN ADAPTATION:
PART II PRE-EUROPEAN
MESOAMERICA
TYPES OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: TRIBES
In terms of the
basic vocabulary
of the social institutional vocabulary, as people begin to adopt agriculture and live in semi-permanent settlements near their fields they
begin to develop conceptions of “kinship” that provide a mechanism to regulate the distribution of agricultural land . A
tribe consists of several kin groups with roughly these features. See
Harris '83 :110-115.
- Settlement Pattern
- 100-1000 people, semi-permanent, year-round villages
- Food Production
- Hunting-Gathering, beginning agriculture
- Sub-Units
- Families, larger kin-groups (clans, lineages) as holders of agricultural land, cross lineage “fraternal orders” related to ritual
- Ritual
- Regular schedule of ceremonies to regulate agriculture, trade, distribution
- Division of Labor
- By sex and age only
- Leadership
- Authority based, informal, activity specific, ephemeral
- Mode of Exchange
- Reciprocal
- Status Structure
- Egalitarian
Colorado School of Mines
Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies
Dr. Joseph D. Sneed
jsneed@mines.edu
