ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses some of the ethnographic and archaeological cases on storage and societal organization, practices, and change to exemplify some dimensions of the problem. It discusses craft goods and raw materials. It addresses the distinctive nature of cultural systems that defines their differences. This chapter illustrates the developing centralization of storage functions and the differing social relationships that this reflects. It reviews societies developing rank, different dynamics set up depending on whether the newly institutionalized leadership relies on staple or wealth finance. The chapterdescribes ranked society breaches call as the egalitarian society. It opposes horizontal egalitarian systems, the mobilization of workers/labor from a multisite ranked system involves a bounded polity, and also opposes open-ended kinship network. Wallace distinguishes kinship from community from administrative forms of social organization. Fiske offers a classification of such organizational relationships.
