An Essay on Political Economies in Prehistory
by Timothy Earle
A political economy approach to prehistory offers a robust means to understand different pathways to complexity. This book argues that economic relations and their potential for control of surplus mobilization explain alternative evolutionary trajectories in human societies.
A political economy approach to prehistory offers a robust means to understand different pathways to complexity. Why do states with extreme inequality develop quickly in some circumstance, while in others egalitarian societies continue for thousands of years? The search for primary drivers like population density, warfare, trade, irrigation, or information have proven largely inadequate. This essay argues that economic relations and their potential for control of surplus mobilization explain alternative evolutionary trajectories in human societies.
Timothy Earle, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
- By (author) Timothy Earle
"The work provides a valuable distillation of the thinking of a major theoretician of prehistoric archaeology that will be especially useful in university courses on archaeological theory. . . . Earle provides in this little booklet, a succinct and usefull overview of his thinking about ancient political economies. In the one-and-a-half-page conclusion, he also points out that archaeologists have much to contribute to our understanding of the rise of autocracy and inequality in the modern world." --Kirch, Patrick V., American Antiquity, Vol.85, No.2, 2020
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