alleged case of adultery, failure to pay up on a dowry payment or
words said in a drunken brawl. But everyone would be severely
inconvenienced if the other lineage in the village was not prepared to
co-operate in the next hunt or harvest. An additional subtlety, which
modified any tendency to take disputes too far, was the consideration
that your opponents in this dispute might be needed in a larger
dispute with more distantly related Tiv at some time in the future!
The Tiv are only one example of numerous tribal societies that
have existed without centralised governmental institutions. Many
have used some variation of the combination of ‘feuding’ and
informal reconciliation systems practised by them. Additionally
though, disputes might be settled by resort to oracles like the famous
classical Greek oracle at Delphi, in which disputes were arbitrated
upon using magical signs resulting from sacrifices. The ambiguity of
some of these pronouncements may well have been a sensible
political device on the part of the oracle, or medicine man, to avoid
identification with either side and promote a negotiated settlement.
Other societies practised a division of functions on an ‘age grade’
basis in which, for instance, the oldest men might collectively manage
relationships with the gods, another male age group constitute the
leaders of the hunt, the oldest women practise medicine, and so on. In
some groups important functions connected with warfare, law and
order, or magic might be vested in secret or title societies, member-
ship of which had to be earned by giving feasts to existing members,
undergoing initiation ceremonies and performing subordinate roles
in a trainee grade. In such societies skill in magic or warfare might be
rewarded by promotion ‘on merit’, or promotion might depend upon
seniority.
Authority in such societies might rest upon a variety of founda-
tions – a reputation for wisdom in settling disputes, knowledge of
traditional remedies for illness, ability as a war leader or merely being
the grandparent of a very large (polygamous) family. Such authority
figures might well be known by a title which translates into English
as ‘chief’ – but their powers were often far from the absolute
despotisms imagined by many early Western writers on these
subjects. (Of course, chiefs in some tribal societies did have what we
might regard as ‘despotic’ authority, e.g. Shaka the nineteenth-
century Zulu chief who ordered whole battalions of his men to
commit suicide as a demonstration of his absolute authority.)30 SYSTEMS