ANTIQUITY of the pot at B, can be measured. Alternatively, shown in FIG. ~b it is also possible to measure the YA can be measured and added to the known co-ordinates of points such as D (AC and DC) XY, if it is preferred not to move the pot. or F (AE and EF). By plotting these and other Whilst the pot and the device are in the position points, the shape of the vessel can be recovered. Saints of Wessex? This contribution is from Mrs Alice B. Kehoe for the segmentation may be simply in terri- who teaches in the Department of Sociology and torial terms’ (p. 48). ‘Clan-loyalty . . . is sus- Anthropology in Marquette University, Mil- tained, roughly, by pasture rights, inheritance waukee, Wisconsin. Professor Renfrew has re- expectations, and rights to brides. Pasture rights sponded to our request to add his comments. are possibly the most important of these factors Colin Renfrew’s (1973) view that neolithic . . . A tribesman knows that he may need the Wessex was divided into chiefdoms is consistent distant pastures in which he has a stake and which are guarded by his clan brethren, when, with the Law of Uniformitarianism, but as Renfrew himself admits, allowing of greater in due course, snow or drought, as the case may refinement. An ethnographic model that may be, will render his nearby pasture useless’ better fit the data is offered by Ernest Gellner (P. 59). in his study of Moroccan Berbers, Saints of the ‘Berber society . . . provides an exceptionally Atlas (1969). good specimen of the segmentary principle, of Gellner describes the complex social and the maintenance of political order over exten- religious bricoleurs’ delight through which an sive areas, large populations and diversified and apparently anarchic people arrange their complementary ecologies, without much in the business and achieve a stable, economically way of a concentration of power, a centralized successful cultural pattern. These Berbers state. . . . This relative segmentary purity . . . is perhaps ought not to be termed members of made possible by the saints [igurramen, chiefdoms, lacking as they do ‘pervasive ‘marabouts’, holy men] : these inegalitarian, inequality . . . associated with permanent stratified, pacific, “artificial” outsiders perform leadership’ (Renfrew quoting Service and functions which enable the egalitarian, feud- Sahlins), unless one considers the saintly addicted tribesmen to work their remarkably mediators to fulfil the quoted criteria. Whether pure segmentary system’ (p. 64). ‘A visitor to or not chiefdoms exist in the High Atlas of the central High Atlas . . . could have observed Morocco, Gellner’s Berbers manage a society [that] igurramen, possessors of baraka [divine that matches Renfrew’s Wessex data parti- blessing], are held worthy of reverence and with cularly at the two points at which, according to it of obedience; he would have noticed that Renfrew (p. 556), the Wessex material fails to baraka is highly concentrated, more so than its meet Service and Sahlins’s definition of explanation in terms of descent [from the chiefdoms : the lack of ecological diversity and Prophet] would warrant, but in a way conducive the lack of evidence for personal ranking. to the effective concentration of influence; he A segmentary society, exemplified by the would be assured by the igurramen that they High Atlas Berbers, consists of ‘social units . . . appoint the annual secular chieftains (though at various levels of size, the larger incorporating he might notice that this is a misleading the smaller as subparts’ (Gellner, 1969, 90). exaggeration), that they are the supreme court ‘The functions of maintaining cohesion, social of the region, and that they communicate the control, some degree of “law and order” . . . unique Shra’a, Koranic legislation (though can be performed with tolerable efficiency, again the visitor might have his doubts about simply by the “balancing” and “opposition” of the accuracy of this claim [the igurramen are constituent groups’ (pp. 41-2). ‘Segmentation illiterate and actually uphold tribal tradition]). cannot be defined in terms of unilineal kinship, He would [notice] some features of this NOTES AND NEWS “state”, such as the lack of clear boundaries, other functions depend ultimately upon the the fact that it has more than one capital and igurramen’s gift of mediation between their centre of power, that its citizens may have clients and their sainted forefathers in the multiple allegiances within and without its tombs, who in turn mediate with the Divine. boundaries, sometimes depending on the Hence political life centres at the tombs. season, and so forth‘ (p. 68). The number and spacing of neolithic long What strikes the archaeologist is that the barrows in Wessex seem congruent with a locus of governing (there is no government) for segmentary society dependent upon the media- the High Atlas Berbers is the tomb of an tion of saintly men inheriting hoIy power from agurram (singular of igurramen). Here reside revered forefathers buried in the tombs. In the descendants of the revered man, including such a society, one would not find material one or more who have inherited his baraka and inequality: no one accumulates or displays real serve as the living agurram or igurramen. An wealth, for the igurramen receive only to agurram ‘is recognized . . . when claiming and redistribute hospitably. Ecological diversity of citing a holy geneaology . . . has baraka. . . . the type conceptualized by Service and Sahlins Stones of magical powers . . . will be told and need not exist, for specialized production and believed of igurramen. Causal connection trade are not parts of the model; the ecological between objective blessing or disasters (good differentiation Gellner mentions refers on& to or bad harvests, cures or illnesses), and the acts, pastures sufficiently distant from one another blessings and curses, of igurramen will be that local calamities will not affect all the postulated and believed. . . . An agurram will resources in the political region. Finally, the receive donations from people seeking blessing, Wessex downs, though they may have held which will enable him to be generous and shifting agriculture in the Neolithic, must have hospitable. . . . An agurram will be revered and been important grazing areas-according to not be an object of aggression. . . . Being Mr Humphrey Case grazing would have been pacific, he will be able to carry out the tasks of especially important in the early Neolithic. The an agurram’ (p. 75). ‘The services performed by High Atlas kind of society could have become igurramen are: The supervision of the election established in the second generation of settle- of chiefs . . . mediation between groups in ment, at the death of the first agurram to conflict . . . acting as a court of appeal . . . migrate with the herders, precisely as described providing . . . for the main legal decision for the Berbers of the Ahansal region. procedure, namely trial by collective oath, Areas other than the High Atlas have providing a sanctuary . . . acting . . . for those segmentary societies in which territorial rights who are forced to seek a new place within the and political co-operation are secured through tribal structure . . . providing leadership . . . the mediation of divinely blessed or ordained against outside agression . . . providing . . . in men serving at ancestral shrines. Roger connection with the complex spatio-temporal Keesing (1970) discusses such societies in the territorial boundaries which arise from trans- Solomon Islands and in Africa, Though humancy . . . protection of travellers, of inter- Keesing is focussing on kinship rather than tribal religious festivals and other activities . . . territory or politics, his data fit with Gellner’s being centres of information . . . establishing and, I believe, Renfrew’s Wessex material. and guaranteeing of such inter-tribal links as The.segmentary society governed by igurramm exist . . . working divine blessing, performing is a model more refined than Service and miracles, etc.’ (p. 78). The most crucial service, Sahlins’s chiefdom, and in my opinion, closer in Gellner’s estimation, is the maintenance of to the Wessex Neolithic. pasture rights through remembering tradi- tional rights and mediating conflicts ; through Professor Colin Renfrew writes : the latter function, the igurramen adjust Alice Kehoe’s note raises a number of im- tradition to current exigencies. These and all portant issues. In the first place, she is right to 233 ANTIQUITY stress the underlying points of similarity ‘individualizing’ chiefdoms (Renfrew, in press). between the example she quotes and early The Berber case, if it can be regarded as a neolithic Wessex. Both may be viewed as chiefdom at all, would fall like late neolithic segmentary societies, with a burial monument Wessex, within the former category. acting as the focal point for each territory. Archaeologists are only now beginning again Such an arrangement, whether the focus be a to draw on the experience of contemporary and tomb or a shrine, is very common in non- recent societies, which two generations ago stratified societies, from the Tuamotu Islands proved so valuable a source of inspiration, and (Ottino, 1967) to west Africa (Goody, 1973). which has always lain at the root of much The precise social mechanism which maintains archaeological reasoning (Orme, 1973). A the stability of the structure obviously differs minority (I hope) of social anthropologists from case to case, and the instance of the resents this renewed arachaeological incursion Berber agurram or holy man is interesting. into what these, with heightened territorial It is, however, important to distinguish awareness, regard as their own exclusive between the different levels of an organization preserve. In the face of their essentially negative or hierarchy. Many chiefdoms comprise a criticism we must simply work towards a more mosaic of small, local territories each sub- positive understanding of the structural features ordinate to the higher level jurisdiction exer- which the organizations of many societies hold cised over the aggregate. My proposal (1973) in common. Spatial organization and socio- was that the henge monuments of late neolithic spatial hierarchy indicate a first and obvious Wessex indicate (and were the central places opportunity. Alice Kehoe has offered us a for) such larger polities, each including within consideration of the archaeological implications its territory a score or so of the former long of a specific social device for establishing and barrow territories. maintaining order, of a kind which has been I am not clear in the Berber case whether missing for too long from the pages of there is a social and spatial stratification of this ANTIQUITY. I hope that it heralds a much wider kind. If there is, then the role of the ugurrum and freer discussion of these issues by archaeo- is in many ways analagous to that of a chief (in logists. Anthropology is too important to be the sense of the word defined by Service), for left to the anthropologists alone. there is certainly permanent inequality here, GELLNER, E. 1969. Saints of the Atlas (London). even if it is not expressed in material goods but GOODY, J. 1973. The social organization of the LoWiili in baruku. The role of the holy man in (London, 2nd edition). adjudicating over and regulating access to KEESING, R. M. 1970. Shrines, ancestors, and cognatic pasture land is clearly analagous to that of the descent: the Kwaio and Tallensi, American Anthropologist, LXXII, 755-75. chief in a situation of more marked ecological ORME, B. 1973. Archaeology and ethnography, in diversity. The services of the ugurrum, as (ed.) C. Renfrew, The explanation of culture quoted by Kehoe, undoubtedly include many change: models in prehistory (London and that may be regarded as functions of a chief. Pittsburgh), 481-92. OTTINO, P. 1967. Early ‘Ati of the western Tuamotus, And the existence also of purely secular chiefs in (ed.) G. A. Highland, Polynesian culture creates no paradox: the separation of secular history: essays in honor of Kenneth P. Emory and religious powers was explicitly formulated (Honolulu), 451-82. in one of the classic Polynesian chiefdoms, RENFREW, c. 1973. Monuments, mobilization and social organization in neolithic Wessex, in (ed.) where in Tonga the Tu’i Kanokupolu and the C. Renfrew, The explanation of culture change: Tu’i Tonga had their own simultaneous rights models in prehistory (London and Pittsburgh), and duties, although the latter was higher in 5 39-58. status. in press. Beyond a subsistence economy: the Different tendencies in chiefdom society evolution of social organization in prehistoric Europe, in (ed.) C. Moore, Reconstructing may be simply, if crudely, expressed by complex societies (American Schools of Oriental distinguishing between ‘group-oriented‘ and Research). 234