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Resumo

Status characteristics theory and elementary theory are applied to explain developments through three structural forms that chiefdoms are known to take. Theoretic models find that downward mobility inherent in the first form, the status-lineage structure, destabilizes its system of privilege. As a consequence, high-status actors are motivated to find mechanisms to preserve and enhance privilege. By engaging in hostile relations with other chiefdoms, high-status actors offer protection to low-status others from real or imagined threats. Through that protection, they gain tribute and support. The result is structural change from influence based on status to power exercised through indirect coercion, the second structural form. In settled societies, accumulation through war and selective redistribution contribute to separation of warrior and commoner rankings. That separation leads to the third structural form, direct coercive chiefdom.

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