CURRENT Volume 31, Number 4, August-October ANTHROPOLOGY 1990 O 1990 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved oo~~-~~o~/~o/~~o~-ooo~$~.~~ Labor Control and Emergent Stratification in Prehistoric Europe1 by Gary S. Webster Prevailing theories on the emergence of stratified societies in pre- historic Europe, which focus on the differential control of mate- rial wealth and resources by an elite minority, are deficient in failing to define the socioenvironmental circumstances under which the differential control of resources might initially have been established. An alternative model is offered that generates stratification from the patron-client relationships known to occur ethnographically in certain circumscribed, high-risk environmen- tal settings. Implications of the model find partial support in an examination of settlement and sociopolitical trends during the European Neolithic. GARY S. WEBSTER is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University (University Park, Pa. 16802, U.S.A.). Born in 1948, he received his B.A. from Boise State Uni- versity in 1976 and his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1983. His research interests are the prehistory of Europe (with a focus upon the Bronze and Iron Ages of Sardinia, where he has been conducting fieldwork since 1984), the evolution of middle- range hierarchical societies, and paleoeconomics. He has pub- lished "Duos Nuraghes: Preliminary Results of the First Three Seasons of Excavations" (Journal of Field Archaeology I 5:464-72) and, with coeditor Joseph W. Michels, Studies in Nuragic Ar- chaeology: Village Excavations at Nuraghe Urpes and Nuraghe Toscano in West-Central Sardinia (British Archaeological Reports International Series 373, 1987) The present paper was submitted in final form 8 I 90. In due season The king himself came to the hall; Healfdene's son would sit at the banquet. No people has gathered in greater retinue, Borne themselves better about their ring-giver. Beowulf The first clearly stratified societies2 of Europe, by most recent estimates, were the "palace-centered" states of I. An earlier version of part of this paper was originally delivered, under the title "Elite Majorities and the Emergence of Stratifica- tion in Prehistoric Europe," to the Tenth Annual Conference of the Theoretical Archaeology Group, held at the University of Sheffield, December 13-15, 1988. The preparation of this paper benefited greatly from the suggestions of Graeme Barker, John Bintliff, An- tonio Gilman, James Lewthwaite, Alan McPhenon, Sarunas Milisauskas, and an anonymous referee. 2. Fried's (1967:186) classic definition of a stratified society is "one in which members of the same sex and equivalent age status do not zd-millennium-B.C. Greece (Minoan, Mycenaean). Only much later, during the 1st millennium, did perhaps com- parably stratified "kingdoms" appear in temperate Europe (La T h e ) , peninsular Italy (Etruscan),and possi- bly Iberia (Iron Age cultures) (cf. Shennan 1987).During the past 15 years, research within the so-called social archaeology school (Bogucki 1985:785; 1988; Wells 1984a:745) has generated a number of competing pro- cessual models of the emergence of stratification. Al- though these models vary widely, they share a limited perspective. With few exceptions they model the stratification process in terms of the ascent to power of an elite minority through the control, management, or monopolization of material wealth: commodities (Ren- frew 197x480-88; Kristiansen 1984, 1987; Geselowitz 1988; Wells 1980, 1984b, 1985; Van Andel and Runnels 1988)~ prestige items, including "token" currency (Fried- man and Rowlands 1977; Haselgrove 1982, 1987; S. Champion I 982; Frankenstein and Rowlands I 978; cf. Kipp and Schortman 1989; Halstead 1981; O'Shea 1981 Halstead and O'Shea 1982)~ land (Bintliff 1982:106; 1984b:173; Randsborg 1982; T. Champion 1982)~ or cap- ital, for example, plows, irrigation works, polyculture farming, and cattle (Gilman I 98 I; I 987:28; Randsborg 1982; R. Chapman 1978, 1982; T. Champion 1982; Gib- son 1988; Lewthwaite 1985a, b; 1986; Gilman and Thornes I 98 5 ). What is unclear in these models is how an elite minor- ity comes to control material wealth in the first place. They would appear to require the prior existence of the power to secure, defend, and use resources, technology, exchangeltrade networks, and capital for private and/or public ends. The assumption is that since the asymmet- rical distribution and hierarchization of material wealth characterizes highly stratified polities (states and em- pires; see Flannery 1972)~ these attributes will have been important causal factors in the emergence of elites (see have equal access to the basic resources that sustain life." Al- though this definition is accepted here, no narrowly typological interpretation of its implications is intended. Here stratified soci- eties are viewed as those occurring toward the upper end of a con- tinuum defined by the degree or intensity of internal social, eco- nomic, and political differentiation (cf. Johnson and Earle 1987, Geselowitz 1988). In terms of Service's (1962) model of sociocul- tural integration, stratification increases as societies develop from band to tribe to chiefdom to state. Furthermore, it ultimately re- sults in "the emergence of genuine socioeconomic classes asso- ciated with markedly contrasting standards of living, security, or even life expectancy" (Fried 1967:225). Such differentials of privi- lege, power, and prestige are more pronounced than in ranked soci- eties because they are ultimately based upon differential access to productive resources (land, labor, capital). As Fried (1960:470) states, "The decisive significance of stratification is not that it sees differential amounts of wealth in different hands, but that it sees two kinds of access to strategic resources. One of these is privileged and unimpeded; the other is impaired, depending on complexes of permission which frequently require the payment of dues, rents, or taxes in labor or kind." Mann (1986:38) has recently maintained that it is the class system that underlies the political power hierar- chy of complex societies: "Stratification involves the permanent, institutionalized power of some over the material life chances of others. Its power may be physical force or the ability to deprive others of the necessities of life. . . ."