Anarchy, institutional flexibility, and containment of authority at Poverty Point (USA)

Monumental architecture has long been associated with the rise of the State and societal inequality, yet recent studies have shown some small and relatively egalitarian societies also built large-scale architecture. This study posits that some of these groups utilized ‘institutional flexibility’ – a strategy of creating and then dismantling hierarchical power systems during limited periods of time – as a means of harnessing group labor, establishing ritual cycles, and policing behavior during periods of gathering, but then reverting to more autonomous power relations for the remainder of the year when groups were dispersed. Poverty Point, a complex earthwork site in Louisiana (USA), built by hunter-gatherer-fisher peoples over a 500-year period (ca. 3600–3100 cal B.P.) exemplifies the use of ‘institutional flexibility’ and demonstrates how this strategy can result in extremely complex activities, while also preserving autonomous power relations by containing elite aspirations to particular temporal, spatial, and social contexts.