Standardization of an Index of Sociocultural Development for Precivilized Societies¹

By scaling eighteen of the traits previously found to be important indicators of societal development, the author's Index of Sociocultural Development was brought closer to the status of an equal‐interval ratio scale. Its relation to the logarithm of settlement population as a criterion of societal development was thereby linearised and attained a correlation coefficient of 0.969. Its characteristic exponential relationship with Carneiro's Index of Cultural Accumulation, previously given a theoretical interpretation, was unaffected. In the process of standardizing and validating the Index, it was found that male‐dominant and equidominant societies had significantly different settlement populations and scale sequences of developmental traits. The basis of a standard procedure for obtaining ratings of sociocultural traits suitable for use in the Index is described.