Archaeologically, one can look at power in three domains: economic power, social and ideological power, and political power. The combination of economic productivity, the control over sources and distribution of food and wealth, the segregation and maintenance of the stratified social system and its ideology, and the ability to maintain control by force were the vital ingredients of early states. Each of these domains was closely linked to the others, but they can be studied separately in the archaeological record.
Economic power depends on the ability to create more specialized production and to organize the diverse tasks of storage and food distribution. In time, stored wealth in food and goods develops into relationships of dependency between those who produce or acquire the wealth and those who control and distribute it. A state comprises elites (the noble class), officials (the managers), and dependents (the commoners). The landowning class and the estate- whether owned by a temple, the ruler, or a private individual-provides security for its dependents. All early states developed from foundations in which agricultural production became more intensified and diverse while at the same time moving away from purely kin-based organization into centralized structures, which cross-cut or overrode kinship ties.
Economic power also rested in trade and exchange, in long-distance networks that provided access to commodities not available locally. Sumer obtained its metal from Anatolia, Iran, and the Persian Gulf. Egypt acquired gold and ivory from Nubia, and highland Andean civilizations imported fishmeal from the Pacific coast. The acquisition of exotic commodities or goods on any scale required organization, record keeping, and supervision. The archaeological record shows that the extent of state supervision of trade and traders varied considerably from civilization to civilization.
Social power means ideological power, and it comes from the creation or modification of certain symbols of cultural and political commonality. Such common ideology, expressed in public and private ceremonials, in art and architecture, and in literature, serves to link individuals and communities with common ties that transcend those of kin. Those who create and perpetuate these ideologies are held in high honor and enjoy considerable prestige, for they are often perceived as interceding with the spiritual world and the gods, and they are sometimes even seen as living dieties themselves. The guardians of ideology are privileged individuals, for their spiritual powers give them special social status and allow them to perpetuate social inequality. So important is ideology that one can speak of the Mesopotamian or Maya areas not in a political sense, for they were made up of patchworks of city-states, but in an ideological one. Many great cities of the past, like Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico or Angkor Thom in Cambodia, were a combination of the spiritual and the secular. They all boasted of powerful priesthoods and religious institutions, which owed their wealth to their ability to manage the spiritual affairs of the state, to legitimize rulers as upholders of the cosmic order. And temples, pyramids, and plazas provided imposing settings for elaborate public ceremonies, which ensured the continuity of human life and the universe.Political power rests in the ruler's ability to impose authority throughout society by both administrative and military means. Those who held positions of authority within either the bureaucracy or the army did not come from within the kin system but were recruited outside of it. This political power lay in foreign relations and in defense and waging war. It also operated at a statewide level, dealing with the resolution of major disputes between different factions. But a great deal of power lay outside the political estate, in the hands of community and kin leaders who handled many legal matters that revolved around such issues as land ownership and family law.
Norman Yoffee believes that the interplay between these three sources of power led to the development of new, society-wide institutions, to supreme rulers and the state. There was, he says, no one moment when civilization came into being, for social evolution did not end with the rise of the state. Preindustrial states functioned in an atmosphere of continual change and constant disputation. Some collapsed; others survived for many centuries.This approach to the origin of states argues not for neoevolutionary ladders but for a much greater diversity of social evolution, which saw many trajectories for the development of social complexity. Many societies operated under significant constraints; they may have lacked, say, dependable crops or domesticated animals or the ability to store large amounts of food. Constraints like these took human societies along very different evolutionary paths than those of the state. That some societies did not become civilizations does not mean that they were stuck in a backward "stage" but simply that constraints on growth prevented the interplay of the major factors that led to state formation elsewhere. Thus, the chiefdomwhere social inequality came from within the kin system, where inequality was based on access to resources and the power this control provides-is an alternative trajectory to the state. This approach to the origin of states will require sophisticated research that combines archaeological and historical records in a new synthesis, seldom attempted in the past.
.Ancient Civilizations - Christopher Scaree and Brian Fagan 1997