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Archaic States. Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus, eds. Santa Fe: School for American Research Press, 1998. 427 pp.
Archaic States presents the results of a seminar held at the School for American Research in 1992. Unlike most previously edited volumes on early states, which have focused primarily on the formation or collapse of early states, this book examines the structure and maintenance of early states. Several theoretical issues provide a unifying theme for the diverse set of chapters in this volume: "the operation and structure of ancient states, their scale and territorial extent, the nature of state-level political and economic institutions, the diversity of ancient states, and the value of systematic comparison" (p. 3). The volume is unapologetically evolutionary in tone and comparative in method. In their introductory chapter, Joyce Marcus and Gary Feinman ably defend the use of the state as type and provide a concise review of definitions of the state. They also refute the notions offered by many critics that evolutionary typologies are inherently static and restrictive, obscure variability, or imply uniformity and inevitability of process. As they note, few evolutionary theorists ever proposed such ideas and, if anything, typologies have made us more aware of the diversity of ancient political institutions and the political strategies pursued by leaders. Marcus and Feinman's chapter should be required reading for graduate students currently studying ancient states.
The other nine chapters in the book cover a great deal of ground, both in terms of theory and geography. In "The Ground Plans of Archaic States," Kent Flannery examines the settlement patterns and architecture (palaces, temples, and tombs) of a diverse set of...