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"Timothy Earle has set out to offer the most comprehensive view now available of the economic foundations of early societies, and it may well be that he has succeeded. Bronze Age Economics is a pioneering contribution to archaeological theory." -Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge
List of contents
Preface -- Political Economies of Chiefdoms and Agrarian States -- The Ecology and Politics of Primitive Valuables -- Chiefdoms in Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives -- Hawaiian Chiefdoms -- A Reappraisal of Redistribution -- Prehistoric Irrigation in the Hawaiian Islands -- Specialization and the Production of Wealth -- Style and Iconography as Legitimation in Complex Chiefdoms -- Andean Chiefdoms and the Inka Empire -- Staple Finance, Wealth Finance, and Storage in the Inka Political Economy -- Wealth Finance in the Inka Empire -- Exchange and Social Stratification in the Andes -- Status Distinction and Legitimation of Power as Reflected in Changing Patterns of Consumption in Late Prehispanic Peru -- Chiefdoms of Denmark -- The Bronze Age Economy of Thy -- Property Rights and the Evolution of Chiefdoms -- Ideology, Materialization, and Power Strategies
About the author
Earle, Timothy
Summary
Timothy Earle represents both a personal journey and a growing synthesis of how political economies emerged in human society. He documents how intensification of economies and controlled distribution of both staple and prestige goods drove the political evolutionary processes that prefigured states.
