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Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas. Elsa M. Redmond, ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. 303 PP.
Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas, the second important volume on this subject to be derived from a symposium of the International Congress of Americanists, carries forward the important work of Robert Carneiro and others. Many aboriginal cultures of the New World were led by true chiefs, and this well integrated volume shows how far we have come in understanding the origins and complex dynamics of these systems.
Redmond's introduction offers an overview of the major points presented in these 11 chapters. In defining a chieftaincy as "a situational hierarchy occurring from time to time among nonhierarchichal, uncentralized tribal societies" (p. 3) Redmond raises the possibility that many of these structures could have been short-lived. Furthermore, the existence of transient types of chiefdoms is suggested in several of the contributions. Distinctions between a short-term chieftaincy and more permanent forms, in which leadership rests with a hereditary chief and is transmitted successfully over several generations, provide a significant focus for many examples in the present volume.
Robert Carneiro ("What Happened at the Flashpoint? Conjectures on Chiefdom Formation at the Very Moment of Conception") affirms the "basic structural nature of a chiefdom" as requiring a "paramount political leader" (p. 19) who maintains control over an aggregate of villages. Carneiro notes that chiefdoms "with almost no exceptions, were headed by men who stood out as both military and political leaders." This leads him to conclude "that war and military leadership lay at the very root of the chiefdom" (p. 21 ), an idea similar to one I noted 25 years ago in discussing the rise of kingship in Mesoamerican states. Carneiro believes that the multi village aspect of a chiefdom (series of polities) is different from the simple concept of ranking. While this may prove to be true, I...