Band society

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Not to be confused with Band government.

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Territories with band society 4000 year BP (yellow)
Sphere of the band societies chainging with the time

A band society, sometimes called a camp, or in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human

kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan. The general consensus of modern anthropology sees the average number of members of a social band at the simplest level of foraging societies with generally a maximum size of 30 to 50 people.[1]

Origins of usage in anthropology

'Band' was one of a set of three terms employed by early modern ethnography to analyse aspects of

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, as a model for all Australian indigenous societies, the horde being defined as a group of parental families whose married males all belonged to the one patrilineal clan.[5] 'Horde' from the outset bore stereotypical connotations of Australian Aboriginal societies as primitive, closed, rigid and simple, and came to be discarded not only for its implication of 'swarming savages' but also because it suggested a fixed tribal-territorial entity which compromised the actual field data, the field data allowing for a far more fluid concept of the group.[6]

In 1936, Julian Steward reformulated Radcliffe Brown's highly restrictive definition, by proposing the idea of a band society at the hunter-gatherer level which could be patrilineal, matrilineal or a composite of both.[7] Over time, 'band' has tended to replace the earlier word 'horde' as more extensive comparative work on hunter-gatherer societies shows they are not classifiable as simply closed patrilineal groups, and better approached in terms of a notion of a flexible, non-exclusive social band, having bilateral relations for marriage and other purposes with similar groups in a circumscribed territory.[8]

In 1962,

Les Hiatt invalidated Radcliffe-Brown's theory of the horde, demonstrating that the empirical evidence from Aboriginal societies contradicted Radcliffe-Brown's generalisations.[9]

The word "band" is also used in North America, for example among the indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. With African hunter-gatherers, for instance among the Hadza, the term "camp" tends to be used.[10]

Characteristics

Bands have a loose organization. They can split up (in spring/summer) or group (in winter camps), as the

egalitarian.[12] The best hunters would have their abilities recognized, but such recognition did not lead to the assumption of authority, as pretensions to control others would be met by disobedience.[12] Judgments determined by collective discussion among the elders were formulated in terms of custom, as opposed to the law-governed and coercive agency of a specialized body, as occurred with the rise of the more complex societies that arose upon the establishment of agriculture.[citation needed
]

Definitions and distinctions

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
defined the horde as a fundamental unit of Australian social organizations according to the following five criteria:

  1. It denotes people who customarily share the same camp and lifestyle.
  2. It is the primary landowner of a given territory.
  3. Each horde was independent and autonomous, regulating its social life by a camp-council, generally under the direction of a headman.
  4. Children pertained to the father's horde
  5. A unified horde identity was affirmed in all relations with external tribes.[13]

In his 1975 study, The Notion of the Tribe, Morton Fried defined bands as small, mobile, and fluid social formations with weak leadership that do not generate surpluses, pay taxes or support a standing army.[14]

Bands are distinguished from

bands of the Ojibwa tribe.[citation needed
]

Examples

Band societies historically were found throughout the world, in a variety of climates, but generally, as civilisations arose, were restricted to sparsely populated areas,

Pitjantjatjara from Central Australia and the Palawa from Tasmania
.

See also

Notes

Citations

  1. ^ Zatrev 2014, p. 260.
  2. ^ Helm 2000, p. 2.
  3. ^ Radcliffe-Brown 1918, p. 222.
  4. ^ Yule & Burnell 2013, pp. 382–383.
  5. ^ Helm 2000, pp. 3–4.
  6. ^ Denham 2014, pp. 115–116.
  7. ^ Kelly 2013, pp. 7–8.
  8. ^ Kelly 2013, pp. 2ff..
  9. ^ Peterson 2006, p. 16.
  10. ISBN 978-0-520-25342-1
    .
  11. ^ Briggs 1982, p. 111.
  12. ^ a b Erdal et al. 1994, pp. 176–177.
  13. ^ Radcliffe-Brown 1918, pp. 222–223.
  14. ^ Fried 1975, pp. 8–9.
  15. ^ Schapera 1963, p. 23.
  16. ^ Berdichewsky 1979, p. 5.

Sources

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