Complexity among hunter-gatherers from the Pampean region, South America.

LOPONTE, D; ACOSTA, A.; MUSALI, J

Beyond Affluent Foragers

OXBOW BOOKS

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2005; p. 106 - 125

Human societies are not simple structures, thus the category of complex societies can be considered only in a comparative sense. Though it is true that in the 1960´s and 1970´s, the seminal definition of hunter-gatherer societies (Lee and Devore 1968; Sahlins 1968, 1972), defined them as the simplest human organisations, nowadays, it is known that the image of the Kalahari foragers led Anthropology to a distorted image of the hunter-gatherers (Binford 1980, Woodburn 1980). On the other hand, it is evident that one of the intrinsic features of human culture is its capacity to increase the number and kinds of interactions among their different components. Moreover, excepting the periods of exploration and initial colonisation of the space, human societies exchange goods and information with other societies. All this facts implies that human societies are intermingled in a more complex system.  Some author refers it as "societal complexity", "economical complexity" or moreover, "social inequality" as synonymous. However, the egalitarian status within hunter-gatherers societies has demonstrated to be not an accurate concept to describe them, because different kinds of inequalities could be found in the simplest foragers (Cashdam 1980, Flanagan 1989), but these inequalities are completely different with the concept of an institutional ranked society. When the societal inequality becomes truly institutionalised, is because the society is already very complex or more often, the groups are agriculturalists (Price 1995, Smith 2001). So, we shall not use the expression "social inequality" as synonymous of social or economical complexity. Lower Paraná´s wetland (South America) has an interesting record to explore from the hunter-gatherers complexity studies point of view. So, we present a brief summary of these studies in archaeology in general terms, in order to point out what is a complex society of hunter-gatherer for this study, before to discuss the regional archaeological record of the Paraná´s wetland, what is the main issue of this contribution.