ABSTRACT

The renewed interest in archaic and segmentary states, on the one hand, and in the way in which social inequality manifests itself in nonstate societies, on the other, have coincided in assigning to the appropriation of other people’s work a significant role in the formation of the first social classes in societies where the community remains the ultimate owner of basic production resources (Bender 1990; Lee 1990; Bate 1984; Rowlands 1980; Kristiansen 1982).