Orderly Anarchy

Download or read book Orderly Anarchy written by Robert L. Bettinger and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A provocative and innovative reexamination of the trajectory of sociopolitical evolution among Native American groups in California, this book explains the region's prehistorically rich diversity of languages, populations, and environmental adaptations. Ethnographic and archaeological data and evolutionary, economic, and anthropological theory are often presented to explain the evolution of increasing social complexity and inequality. In this account, these same data and theories are employed to argue for an evolving pattern of 'orderly anarchy,' which featured small, inward-looking groups that, having devised a diverse range of ingenious solutions to the many environmental, technological, and social obstacles to resource intensification, were crowded onto what they had turned into the most densely populated landscape in aboriginal North America"--Provided by publishe