For the past three decades, the prevailing “model” that has been used by archaeologists to investigate the rise of the earliest states is that of “neoevolutionism” – the stepladder model of bands becoming tribes, then chiefdoms, and finally states (Fig. 6.1). In the late 1970s and the 1980s, however, some – but not by any means all – archaeologists (see below for references) questioned the utility of the received model, leaving the situation unresolved for the 1990s. For example:

In this essay I briefly review the arguments that have been made both for and against the typological stage–level neoevolutionary model; I further consider the social and intellectual contexts that help us understand why many archaeologists who once accepted the model now seem ready to jettison it.