THE EARLY STATE, ITS ALTERNATIVES AND ANALOGUES

Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue to remain among those problems which have not found their generally accepted solutions yet. Contributors to The Early State , Its Alternatives and Analogues represent both traditional and non-traditional points of view on the evolution of statehood. However, the data presented in the volume seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diversity of pathways to statehood, as well as non-universality of transformation into states of complex and even supercomplex societies. The diversity of sociopolitical forms, non-unilinearity of social evolution, presence of alternatives/analogues of the early state and complexity of state formation process far exceeding the ones indicated by conventional evolutionist schemes can be regarded as general ideas going through most contributions to the volume