10 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA
villages. These villages had lost their autonomy
and were ruled from an elite center by a para-
mount chief, who was aided by a hierarchy of
subordinate chiefs. Ranking was an important el-
ement in chiefdom social organization, but it was
defi ned in kinship terms. Individuals were ranked
according to their genealogical nearness to the
paramount chief, who was often assigned a sacred
character and attended by a large retinue of offi -
cials and servants. The paramount chief siphoned
off the surplus production of the group by requir-
ing tribute payment and forced donations; he used
much of this surplus for selective redistribution to
offi cials, retainers, and warriors, thereby enhanc-
ing his own power. Warfare between chiefdoms
was very common and probably played a decisive
role in their origin and expansion through the ab-
sorption of neighboring villages. Warfare, leading
to the taking of captives who were enslaved and
made to labor for their owners, also contributed to
the growth of incipient social stratifi cation.
Numerous chiefdoms existed in ancient Amer-
ica on the eve of the Spanish Conquest, with the larg-
est number in the Circum-Caribbean area (including
Panama, Costa Rica, northern Colombia, and Ven-
ezuela; and the islands of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico,
Jamaica, and Cuba). The Cauca Valley of Colombia
alone contained no fewer than eighty chiefdoms.
The complex, densely populated Chibcha or
Muisca chiefdoms, located in the eastern high-
lands of Colombia, may serve to illustrate this level
of social and political integration. They rested on a
subsistence base of intensive agriculture and fi sh-
ing, and hunting was an important supplemen-
tary activity. The agricultural techniques most
likely included terracing and ridged planting beds
(raised above wet basin fl oors to control moisture),
as well as slash-and-burn methods. In addition to
maize, these chiefdoms cultivated potatoes, qui-
noa (a hardy grain resembling buckwheat), and a
wide variety of other plants. The crafts—pottery,
weaving, and metallurgy—were highly developed.
Their magnifi cent gold work ranks among the fi n-
est such work in ancient America.
At the time of the Spanish Conquest, most of
the Muisca territory was dominated by two rival
chiefdoms that were centered at Bogotá and Tunja,
respectively; the population of the area has been
estimated at about 1.5 million. The Muisca lived in
large villages of several hundred to several thou-
sand people. Each village consisted of pole-and-
thatch houses and was surrounded by a palisade.
The society was divided into commoners and elites,
and membership in both sectors entailed differen-
tial rights and obligations. Commoners owed trib-
ute in goods and labor for the support of the chiefs
and nobles, who controlled the distribution and
consumption of surplus production.
The chiefdom marks the transition to the next
and highest stage of organization, sometimes called
civilization or, more simply, the state level of social
and political integration. The dividing line between
the two stages, especially in the case of larger and
more complex chiefdoms, is diffi cult to draw, since
the state refl ected an expansion and deepening of
tendencies already present in the chiefdom. There
was a growth of division of labor and specializa-
tion that was indicated by the formation of artisan
groups who no longer engaged in farming, the rise
of a priesthood in charge of religious and intellec-
tual activities, the rise of a distinct warrior class,
and a bureaucracy entrusted with the administra-
tion of the state. These changes were accompanied
by intensifi ed social stratifi cation and correspond-
ing ideological changes. The kinship ties that in fact
or in theory had united the paramount chief and
the elite with the commoners became weakened or
dissolved, and a true class structure arose, with a
ruling group claiming a separate origin from the
commoners whose labor supported it. At the head
of the state stood a priest-king or emperor who was
sometimes endowed with divine attributes.
The state level of organization required a
technological base of high productivity, usually
an intensive agriculture that made large use of
irrigation, terracing, and other advanced tech-
niques. The state differed from the chiefdom in its
larger size and population, the increased exchange
of goods between regions, sometimes accompa-
nied by the emergence of a professional merchant
class, and the rise of true cities. In addition to being
population, administrative, and industrial centers,
these cities were cult centers that often featured a
monumental architecture not found in chiefdoms.
The Aztec, Maya, and Inca societies offer the best-
known examples of the state level of organization.