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Social Evolution & History, Vol. 2 No. 1, March 2003 pp. 131–176
The Early State and its Analogues
*
Leonid E. Grinin
‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, Volgograd 
ABSTRACT
 It is recognized widely enough that a pre-state society in order to get transformed into a state must have a certain size of territoryand population, a necessary degree of sociocultural complexityand an ability to produce sufficient quantities of surplus. However, sometimes cultures significantly exceed required levels of those parameters without forming states. In addition to this, we knowhistorically and ethnographically a considerable number of  stateless societies not at all inferior to the early state societies withrespect to their territory, population, sociocultural and/or political complexity. So, the question is: how to classify such societies?Compared to unquestionably pre-state societies, such as, for example, simple chiefdoms, they are not only larger in size but much more complex as well. In certain sense, they can be regarded as being at the same level of sociocultural development as early- state societies. And, since both types of societies faced similar  problems and solved similar tasks, I denote complex stateless societies as early state
analogues.
This article is an attempt toanalyze such analogues and compare them with early states.
INTRODUCTION
I can hardly be wrong stating that the view of a state as the only possible, and hence alternativeless, result of the development of  pre-state polities, is predominant among the students of the earlystate formation. Such a unilinear approach, no doubt, aggravates
Social Evolution & History, Vol. 2 No. 1, March 2003 131–176
©
2003 ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House
 
methodological problems encountered by many politicalanthropologists in their studies of complex societies (see,
e.g 
.,McIntosh 1999a; Vansina 1999). ‘It is often said that research onthe formation of complex political organization is currently in astate of methodological deadlock’ (Bondarenko 2000a: 213).However, it will be easier to get out of this methodologicaldeadlock if we reject the idea that the state was the only anduniversal possibility of development for complex post-primitivesocieties
and recognize that there were alternative pathways,other than transformation into early states
(Bondarenko 2000a;Grinin 2001). Luckily, the idea that non-state societies are notnecessarily less complex and less efficient than the state ones,nowadays looks less blasphemous than a few years ago(Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev 2002: 56; also Claessen2002:101)
1
.I have denoted those alternatives to the early state as
early stateanalogues
(Grinin 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2001, 2002a,2002b, 2002c, 2002d). Some of these analogues turn out to beincapable to get transformed into states at all. Other systems of thiskind do become states – but when reaching quite a high level of development and complexity that is fairly comparable with thoseof many state societies. Therefore, it is important to accept the factthat the societies that preceded the formation of the statehistorically strongly differ among themselves in size andcomplexity.
This means that in different societies the transitionto the state started not from the same but from different levelsof sociocultural and political complexity.
Thus, a society, after reaching a certain size and a certain levelof sociocultural complexity (at which the transition to the state isalready possible), may continue to develop – and at the same timenot to build political forms of an early state for a long time. In particular, a culture may have a very high level of socialstratification (examples are given further in the text) but lack astate system. But if we understand the early state only as a productof antagonistic social contradictions (
e.g.
, Engels 1961; Fried1967, 1978; Krader 1978 etc.), such phenomena could be hard toexplain
2
.Although the analysis of existing points of view, as regardswhat the state is and what its basic features are, is beyond the
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scope of this paper, it is necessary to point out that in thiscontext throughout this paper the early state is regarded first of allas a special political organization of a society (a system of politicaland administrative institutions) that emerges (
not always, but onlyin certain conditions
) in societies that have already reached anecessary level of development, and, particularly, a certain level of sociocultural and political complexity, that produce necessaryamounts of surplus, and have necessary territory size and population
3
.
EARLY STATE ANALOGUES:SIZE AND SOME CHARACTERISTICS
We know many historical and ethnographic cases of polities whichdiffer from the early state significantly in political organization and power as well as administrative structure, but are similar to it insize and complexity (Beliaev, Bondarenko, and Frantsouzoff (eds.)2002; Bondarenko 1995, 2000a, 2000b, 2001;Bondarenko and Korotayev (eds.) 2000a; Bondarenko andSledzevski (eds.) 2000; Crumley 1995, 2001; Grinin 1997, 2000a,2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002, 2002d; Korotayev 1995, 2000a,2000b; Kradin and Lynsha (eds.) 1995; Kradin
et al.
(eds.) 2000;McIntoch (ed.) 1999b; Schaedel 1995 etc.).It is recognized universally enough that, to form a state, a pre-state society must possess a certain set of minimal characteristicswith respect to territory, population, complexity, sociopoliticalinequality and ability to accumulate surplus (cf.
e.g.
Claessen1978a, 2000, 2002). Societies, however, can significantly outgrowrespective levels of those indices – but without forming a state.How then should such societies be classified? Still as pre-stateones or as something else?I am convinced that the most productive path to follow is torecognize them as
early state analogues
(Grinin 1997, 2000a,2000b, 2000c, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2002d; Bondarenko,Grinin, and Korotayev 2002). This is because, on the one hand, if compared with doubtlessly pre-state societies, such as, for example, simple chiefdoms, tribes etc., they are not only bigger insize but much more complex as well. On the other hand, their sizeand complexity were comparable to those of early states and dealtwith problems of comparable scale. This is why they may, in a
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