In
archaeology,
cultural anthropology and
history, a stateless society denotes a less complex human
community without a state, such as a
tribe, a
clan, a
band society or a
chiefdom. The main criterion of "complexity" used is the extent to which a
division of labor has occurred such that many people are permanently
specialized in particular forms of production or other activity, and depend on others for goods and services through trade or sophisticated reciprocal obligations governed by
custom and
laws. An additional criterion is
population size. The bigger the population, the more relationships have to be reckoned with. Evidence of the earliest known city-states has been found in
ancient Mesopotamia around , suggesting that the history of the state is less than 6,000 years old; thus, for most of the human
prehistory the state did not exist. Generally speaking, the archaeological evidence suggests that the state emerged from stateless communities only when a fairly large population (at least tens of thousands of people) was more or less settled together in a particular territory and practised
agriculture. Indeed, one of the typical functions of the state is the defense of territory. Nevertheless, there are exceptions:
Lawrence Krader for example describes the case of the Tatar state, a political authority arising among confederations of clans of nomadic or semi-nomadic herdsmen. Characteristically, state functionaries (royal dynasties, soldiers, scribes, servants, administrators, lawyers, tax collectors, religious authorities, etc.) are typically not self-supporting but are materially supported and financed by taxes and tributes contributed by the rest of the working population. This assumes a sufficient level of labor-productivity
per capita which at least makes possible a
permanent surplus product (principally foodstuffs) appropriated by the state authority to sustain the activities of state functionaries. Such permanent surpluses were generally not produced on a significant scale in smaller tribal or clan societies. The archaeologist
Gregory Possehl has argued that there is no evidence that the relatively sophisticated, urbanized
Harappan civilization, which flourished from about in the
Indus region, featured anything like a centralized state apparatus. No evidence has yet been excavated locally of palaces, temples, a ruling sovereign or royal graves, a centralized administrative bureaucracy keeping records, or a state religion—all of which are elsewhere usually associated with the existence of a state apparatus. However, there is no recent scholarly consensus agreeing with that perspective, as more recent literature has suggested that there may have been less conspicuous forms of centralisation, as Harappan cities were centred around public ceremonial places and large spaces interpreted as ritual complexes. Additionally, recent interpretations of the
Indus Script and Harappan stamps indicate that there was a somewhat centralised system of economic record-keeping. It remains impossible to judge for now as the Harappan civilization's writing system remains undeciphered. One study summarised it as “Many sites have been excavated that belong to the Indus Valley civilization, but it remains unresolved whether it was a state, a number of kingdoms, or a stateless commonwealth. So few written documents on this early civilization have been preserved that it seems unlikely that this and other questions will ever be answered.” In the earliest large-scale human settlements of the
Stone Age which have been discovered, such as
Çatalhöyük and
Jericho, no evidence was found of the existence of a state authority. The Çatalhöyük settlement of a farming community (7,300 BCE to BCE) spanned circa 13 hectares (32 acres) and probably had about 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. Modern state-based societies regularly pushed out stateless indigenous populations as their settlements expanded, or attempted to make those populations come under the control of a state structure. This was particularly the case on the African continent during European colonisation, where there was much confusion among the colonisers about the best way to govern societies that, prior to European arrival, had been stateless. Tribal societies, at first glance appearing to be chaotic to the Europeans, often had well-organised societal structures that were based on multiple undefined cultural factors – including the ownership of cattle and arable land, patrilineal descent structures, honour gained from success in conflict etc.
Uncontacted peoples may be considered remnants of prehistoric stateless societies. To varying extents, they may be unaware of and unaffected by the states that have nominal authority over their territory. ==As a political ideal==