Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, South Stevens Hall, Orono, ME 04469-5773, USA.
Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, 0730 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-0730, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Jan 18;376(1816):20190725. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0725. Epub 2020 Nov 30.
Radiocarbon summed probability distribution (SPD) methods promise to illuminate the role of demography in shaping prehistoric social processes, but theories linking population indices to social organization are still uncommon. Here, we develop Power Theory, a formal model of political centralization that casts population density and size as key variables modulating the interactive capacity of political agents to construct power over others. To evaluate this argument, we generated an SPD from 755 radiocarbon dates for 10 000-1000 BP from Central, North Central and North Coast Peru, a period when Peruvian political form developed from 'quasi-egalitarianism' to state levels of political centralization. These data are congruent with theoretical expectations of the model but also point to an artefactual distortion previously unremarked in SPD research. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography'.
放射性碳总和概率分布 (SPD) 方法有望阐明人口统计学在塑造史前社会进程中的作用，但将人口指数与社会组织联系起来的理论仍然很少见。在这里，我们提出了权力理论，这是一种政治集中化的形式模型，将人口密度和规模作为关键变量，调节政治行为者构建对他人权力的互动能力。为了评估这一论点，我们从秘鲁中北部和北海岸的 10000-1000 BP 时期的 755 个放射性碳日期中生成了一个 SPD，这一时期秘鲁的政治形式从“准平等主义”发展到国家一级的政治集中化。这些数据与模型的理论预期一致，但也指出了 SPD 研究中以前未被注意到的人为扭曲。本文是主题为“史前人口学的跨学科方法”的一部分。
