ABSTRACT
Even though archaeologists have found evidence for alterations in ritual and artistic performance, and political and trading networks, during the Pleistocene some researchers believe that major changes in social practice occurred only in the Holocene, in recent millennia. The most influential depiction of this kind was offered by Harry Lourandos, who proposed a model of alliance formation in which forager groups grew in size and became sedentary in the late-Holocene. He argued that sedentary foragers developed restricted patterns of access to territory and resources, and expanded and formalized alliances and ceremonial networks. Lourandos refined and re-expressed this idea over several decades (Lourandos 1980a, 1980b, 1983a, 1985a, 1985b, 1997; David and Lourandos 1997, 1998, 1999). The alliance formation model of Lourandos, and its application as a holistic image of progression in the guise of ‘intensification’, explored altered group identity and reorganized alliance networks as a potent description of pre-historic social life. This idea has been employed by many researchers trying to understand changing social life in the Holocene. However, in applying this model the complexities of interpreting archaeological evidence, and the existence of other social processes that may have been involved, has often been ignored.
