Tribes, Chiefdoms or States? Duality and power centralization in the social organization of Precolumbian America

Abstract

This paper discusses the theoretical approaches to recent archaeological and ethnographic interpretations of ‘Native Americans’ social and political organization. Our aim is to highlight the needs for new comparative studies that comprehend some fundamental aspects of the indigenous cosmovisions, particularly their notions of chiefdom, in order to surpass some of the limiting factors to the academic debates on social complexity and power relations in the Native America.