Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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In the beginning of the 2 nd millennium there were not less than 130
chiefdoms in Biniland (Obayemi 1976: 242). The linear earthworks – walls
and ditches discovered all over the country, are signs of the chiefdoms’
existence in the past and of their flourishing just immediately before and during
the Ogisos reign (Connah 1975: 237–242; Obayemi 1976: 242; Isichei 1983:
135–136, 265–266; Darling 1981: 115; 1984: I, 119–124, 130–142; II, 307;
1988: 127–131; Keys 1994: 13; Omoregie, O. S. B. s.d.) that gave an additional
impetus to chiefdoms’ further appearance and growth. The country’s capital and
unique symbol of its unity since the Ogiso time, Benin City, had also grown out
of a chiefdom (see Onokerhoraye 1975: 296–298; Darling 1988: 127–129;
Aisien 1995: 5860; Bondarenko 1999) by the early 9 th century (Roese 1990: 8;
Aisien 1995: 58, 65; Bondarenko 2001: 65–66). 53 According to a version of the
oral tradition, sixteen non-hereditary local rulers titled owere, no doubt
identical with the village oidionwere, governed Benin before the First Dynasty
was established (Omoregie, O. S. B. 1992–1994: II; Akenzua, C. A. 1994–
1997: II, 1–3; Aisien 1995: 65). 54 If we may admit that there is a grain of truth
in this relation, 55 we should suppose that the village around which Benin City
later grew, had appeared somewhere in the middle of the 8 th century. It is
difficult to estimate when that village had integrated neighboring villages into
the chiefdom of which Benin City later grew ripe but possibly it really
happened in the late 8 th – early 9 th centuries.
The origins and nature of about a dozen other Bini protocities of the
time (and so typical of complex chiefdoms [see Kradin 1995: 24]) was the
same, but that was Benin City that gained victory and continued to grow due to
obtaining of the exclusive political function and position while the other
protocities went down to the level of big villages (Talbot 1926: I, 153, 156–
157; Egharevba 1949: 90; 1960: 11–12, 85; Connah 1966: 23; 1969: 55; 1975:
242–243; Jungwirth 1968: 140, 166; Ryder 1969: 3; Igbafe 1975: 2–3;
Onokerhoraye 1975: 296–298; Olaniyan 1985: 46; Darling 1988: 127–129,
133; Aisien 1995: 58–60; Bondarenko 2001: 65–71, 87–88, 90–95). So, the
rise of chiefdoms was both a precondition and an aspect of the city formation
process being an outcome of partly the same factors in particular, demographic
growth and integration of agricultural communities (Obayemi 1976: 242; Shaw
1976: 59; 1984: 155; Clark 1977: 206; Connah 1987: 144–145).
The Bini chiefdoms were integrated, rather loosely, by the first Ogiso
(the oral tradition holds down his name: Igodo) who according to some
relations of the oral tradition that find archaeological and ethnographic proofs,
came and hence brought the very institution of monarchy as a form of
suprachiefdom political organization to Biniland from the Yoruba town of Ife
(see Bondarenko 2001: 72–81, 86–96, 125–130; Bondarenko and Roese 2001;
Roese and Bondarenko 2003: 40–50). The situation when a group of local
socio-political units is integrated not by one of the respective units’ leaders but
by completely alien newcomers, was not very infrequent in the course of