Horde

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As a horde (of turksprachig ordu " camp ", see etymology and meaning change ) refers to the anthropology and ethnology a small, independent social group of about 20 to 100 hunter-gatherers (wild gatherers) who live together and usually by descent or marriage to each other related are .

Wildlife hordes consist or consisted of several large families who live as a self- sufficient community and look after work , security, religious rituals and care for their children and old people on an equal footing. This form of social and political organization is called horde society and is still found, for example, among the " Bushmen " in southern Africa (see also the list of today's hunter-gatherer peoples ).

The Archeology assumes that most people groups of the Paleolithic were organized in hordes, as " mobile refers to groups of hunter-gatherers" or "hunter-gatherer". In the meantime, fishing has also been given great importance; as a natural resource , it may have led to the expansion of groups and even to a certain degree of sedentariness .

description

As an ethnic group , a horde is primarily determined by the following characteristics:

A horde mostly has a non-sedentary , nomadic way of life, the group has to migrate seasonally to exploit wild or living food sources . She lives in changing camps (the original word origin of "horde"), to which other places such as slaughter places or transitional camps , but also places for tool production can come, with their own accommodation or shelter options. The division of labor is only based on age, ability and gender . Larger hordes can be divided into local groups (English local bands ). The common identity and group cohesion is cultivated and consolidated through rituals .

The members of a gang are usually family closely linked, either by common descent related by marriage or by marriage . The only form of social organization are the household and residential groups that are relatively independently manage themselves . The social status of a member is based either on his position within the kinship system (e.g. as mother, brother, uncle ) or on personal skills and abilities (e.g. as a great hunter).

All members of the horde are equal to each other ( egalitarian society ), hordes do not develop power structures and have no formal leadership ( freedom of rule ). The leadership of the group is mostly in the hands of the older and oldest members of the horde ( seniority principle ). Leadership positions are allocated according to the specific task, charisma and ability, so there is no great economic difference between the members. Decisions are made in mutual agreement ( consensus principle ). There are no written laws, the customs and traditions of the Horde are passed down orally .

From the Horde a "different tribe " (English tribe ) by the much larger number of families and a total of hundreds or thousands of members, it has more social and political institutions , such as one or more chiefs and tribal council. Before tribes developed, large parts of the continents were populated by loosely-knit ethnic groups or hordes. The existence of hordes and horde societies is historically and archaeologically documented in several continents and climatic zones, preferably in sparsely populated areas. Due to the spread of modern states around the world, there are very few horde societies or hunter-gatherer cultures today (see list of today's hunter-gatherer peoples , as well as indigenous peoples in wilderness areas , isolated peoples ).

Horde society

The horde society ( English band society ) was regarded by the anthropologists , geographers and explorers of the 19th century as an initial stage of socio-cultural development and used to describe hunter-gatherer cultures (English hunter-gatherer bands ). In the 1960s, the American ethnologist Elman Service defined the horde society as the original and simplest form of society in its four-stage development model . While the model is criticized today as one-sided and evolutionist , in ethnosociology and political ethnology the terms horde and horde society are used to determine the social and political organization of self-sufficient ethnic groups. The political form of rule in horde societies is referred to as acephaly (" freedom of rule"). The Historical Materialism writes the Horde society as a " primitive society " an independent production to ( primitive communism ).

In the Elman Service development model, the horde society is followed by the tribal society as the second level of social organization.

See also

literature

  • Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, Marek Zvelebil (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the Archeology and Anthropology of Hunter-gatherers. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-955122-4 (English; excerpt in Google book search).
  • Eleanor Leacock, Richard Lee (Eds.): Politics and History in Band Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1982, ISBN 0-521-24063-8 (English; a basic book; excerpt in the Google book search).
  • Marshall Sahlins : Notes on the Original Affluent Society. In: Richard Barry Lee, Irven DeVore (Eds.): Man the Hunter. The First Intensive Survey of a Single, Crucial Stage of Human Development - Man's Once Universal Way of Life. Aldine, Chicago 1968, ISBN 0-202-33032-X , pp. 85–89 (English; conference proceedings; trend-setting considerations on the " affluent society " among hunters and gatherers / hunters ; 2nd edition from 2009 as full text in the Google book search) .
  • Julian H. Steward: The Patrilineal Band and The Composing Hunting Band. In: Same: Theory of Culture Change. The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1955, ISBN 0-252-00295-4 , pp. 122-142 and 143-151 (English; elaborations of work from 1936 on the organization of hordes; partial view in the Google book search).
  • Frank Robert Vivelo: Hordes. In: The same: Handbook of cultural anthropology. A basic introduction. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-12-938320-4 , pp. 194-196 (US original 1978: Cultural Anthropology Handbook. A Basic Introduction ).
  • Robert H. Winthrop: Volume. In: The same: Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. Greenwood Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-313-24280-1 , pp. 23-26 (English, with literature list; full view in Google book search).

Magazine:

Web links

Wiktionary: Horde  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Britannica Online : Band: kinship group. January 18, 2016, accessed October 23, 2019 .
  2. ^ Robert H. Winthrop: Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. Greenwood Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-313-24280-1 , p. 23 (English; side view in the Google book search); Quote: "A relatively small and self-sufficient group, with subsistence based on some combination of hunting, gathering, and fishing, characterized by near equality or wealth, extensive reciprocity, and informal leadership."
  3. ↑ Charlotte Seymour-Smith: Dictionary of Anthropology. Hall, Boston 1986, ISBN 0-8161-8817-3 , p. 21 (English).
  4. ↑ Bernd Andreae: World Economic Plants in Competition: Economic scope within ecological limits. A product-related crop geography . de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-083977-7 , p. 67.
  5. ↑ The HRAF project of the American anthropologist George P. Murdock uses the designation “bands” for the “Settlement Pattern and Community Organization” to distinguish the approximately 400 ethnic groups, see George P. Murdock: World Ethnographic Sample. In: American Anthropologist. New Series. Vol. 59, No. 4, 1957, pp. 664-687, here p. 669 (English); Quote: "B [=] Bands, ie, migratory or nomadic communities."
  6. ↑ David Hurst Thomas et al. a. (Ed.): The world of the Indians: history, art, culture from the beginnings to the present. Frederking Thaler, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-89405-331-3 , p. 119 (US original: The Native Americans ).
  7. ↑ Elizabeth Prine Pauls: The Difference Between a Tribe and a Band. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . March 6, 2008, accessed October 23, 2019 .