Sanctuaries and Settlement Organization: ‘Confederacies’ as Alternatives to ‘Paramount Chiefdoms’ in Modeling Nuragic Power Relations
Nuragic Sanctuaries - Symbols, Ritual and the Management of Power in Prehistoric Sardinia - Nicola Ialongo
Nicola Ialongo [+]
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Description
Growing complexity in the organization of Nuragic territories is usually interpreted in the sense of the development of a three-tier settlement hierarchy. The envisaged power structure is still based on a three-tier system (small settlement-large settlement-sanctuary), but it is no more tied to scalar power-relationships. While a high tier is still envisaged, its decisional prerogatives are by no means derived from top-down coercive capacities, but they are instead negotiated among peers. The concept of “security regime”, can be employed to simplify the categorization of the envisaged organizational structure. Security regimes are defined as “those principles, rules, and norms that permit nations to be restrained in their behavior in the belief that others will reciprocate” (R. Jervis 1982, Security regimes. International Organization, 36.2: 357-378). The concept basically sets the framework to explain why, and in what conditions, conflicting polities would gain more benefit in normalizing reciprocal relationships, than in pursuing individual supremacy.