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Aband society, sometimes called acamp, or in older usage, ahorde, is the simplest form of humansociety. A band generally consists of a smallkin group, no larger than anextended family orclan. The general consensus of modern anthropology sees the average number of members of a social band at the simplest level of foraging societies with generally a maximum size of 30 to 50 people.[1]
'Band' was one of a set of three terms employed by early modernethnography to analyse aspects ofhunter-gatherer foraging societies. The three were respectively 'horde,' 'band', and 'tribe'.[2] The term 'horde', formed on the basis of a Turkish/Tatar wordúrdú (meaning 'camp'),[3][4] was inducted from its use in the works ofJ. F. McLennan byAlfred William Howitt andLorimer Fison in the mid-1880s to describe a geographically or locally defined division within a larger tribal aggregation, the latter being defined in terms of social divisions categorized in terms of descent. Their idea was then developed byA. R. Radcliffe-Brown, as a model for all Australian indigenous societies, the horde being defined as a group of parental families whose married males all belonged to the one patrilineal clan.[5] 'Horde' from the outset bore stereotypical connotations of Australian Aboriginal societies as primitive, closed, rigid and simple, and came to be discarded not only for its implication of 'swarming savages' but also because it suggested a fixed tribal-territorial entity which compromised the actual field data, the field data allowing for a far more fluid concept of the group.[6]
In 1936,Julian Steward reformulated Radcliffe Brown's highly restrictive definition, by proposing the idea of a band society at the hunter-gatherer level which could be patrilineal, matrilineal or a composite of both.[7] Over time, 'band' has tended to replace the earlier word 'horde' as more extensive comparative work on hunter-gatherer societies shows they are not classifiable as simply closed patrilineal groups, and better approached in terms of a notion of a flexible, non-exclusive social band, having bilateral relations for marriage and other purposes with similar groups in a circumscribed territory.[8]
In 1962,Les Hiatt invalidated Radcliffe-Brown's theory of the horde, demonstrating that the empirical evidence from Aboriginal societies contradicted Radcliffe-Brown's proposal that hordes are always based on patrilineal descent.[9]
The word "band" is also used in North America, for example among theindigenous peoples of the Great Basin. With African hunter-gatherers, for instance among theHadza, the term "camp" tends to be used.[10]
Bands have a loose organization. They can split up (in spring/summer) or group (in winter camps), as theInuit, depending on the season, or member families can disperse to join other bands.[11] Theirpower structure is generallyegalitarian.[12] The best hunters would have their abilities recognized, but such recognition did not lead to the assumption of authority, as pretensions to control others would be met by disobedience.[12] Judgments determined by collective discussion among the elders were formulated in terms of custom, as opposed to the law-governed and coercive agency of a specialized body, as occurred with the rise of the morecomplex societies that arose upon the establishment of agriculture.[citation needed]
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown defined the horde as a fundamental unit of Australian social organizations according to the following five criteria:
In his 1975 study,The Notion of the Tribe,Morton Fried defined bands as small, mobile, and fluid social formations with weakleadership that do not generate surpluses, paytaxes or support a standingarmy.[14]
Bands are distinguished fromtribes in that tribes are generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions, such as achief,big man, orelders. Tribes are also more permanent than bands; a band can cease to exist if only a small group splits off or dies. Many tribes are subdivided into bands.[citation needed] On occasion hordes or bands with common backgrounds and interests could unite as a tribal aggregate in order to wage war, as with theSan,[15] or they might convene for collective religious ceremonies, such as initiation rites or to feast together seasonally on an abundant resource as was common in Australian aboriginal societies.[citation needed] Among theNative Americans of theUnited States and theFirst Nations ofCanada, some tribes are made up of official bands that live in specific locations, such as the variousbands of the Ojibwa tribe.[citation needed]
Band societies historically were found throughout the world, in a variety of climates, but generally, as civilisations arose, were restricted to sparsely populated areas,tropical rainforests,tundras anddeserts.[16] With the spread of the modernnation-state around the globe there are few true band societies left. Some historical examples include theShoshone of theGreat Basin in the United States, theSan people ofSouthern Africa, theMbuti of theIturi Rainforest inCentral Africa, and many groups ofindigenous Australians, such as thePitjantjatjara fromCentral Australia and thePalawa fromTasmania.