Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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“many” (compare, for example, with the traditional figure of the Ogiso rulers – also 31, although it
is clear that this figure is not precise [Bondarenko 2001: 83]).
56 Thus, the traditional general names, the “Ogiso dynasty” or the “First dynasty”, are
actually historically incorrect though they are routinely used in Benin historiography due to the
tradition, just the same way as the name “empire” with regards to Benin of the 15 th – 19 th centuries
(see above).
57 Although in reality this could well be another way round – see Bondarenko 2001: 191–
193.
58 For detailed ethnohistorical and ethnographic descriptions of the Bini agriculture see
Egharevba 1949: 67–70; Bradbury 1957: 23–25; 1973: 154; Roese and Rees 1994: 543–545.
59 Just its stability allows extrapolating of the ethnographic evidence on the community on
earlier periods of the people’s socio-political history with a rather high degree of certainty. This
was specifically emphasized by Bradbury (1964), the most outstanding student of Benin
ethnography and history.
60 Maisels denotes sibs/clans as “lineages” or “conical clans” (e.g., Chinese) while lineages
proper he calls “minimal lineages.”
61 Thus at this level of analysis it is incorrect to equate the Sumerian й and Akkadian
bоtum with the Greek oikos as Maisels (following Gelb [1979: 12–13]) does, paying no attention to
the difference between the two types of households I emphasize. Mesopotamian households clearly
are of the second type distinguished by me what becomes evident from Maisels’s own description
above all, while the oikos was individual families uniting household as back as in the Dark Ages
(Andreev 1976: 74–78; Frolov 1988: 79–80) which later could unite for political and economic
reasons in artificial kinship units called genē (Fine 1983: 35–36). Watson’s (1978: 156) reasoning
(cited by Maisels [1987: 350]) that already in the 6 th millennium BC Near East “… the basic
residential unit… was… a nuclear family…” (see also Byrd 2000) does not discredit what has been
argued just above: in anthropological terms, this only means that not “joint” (“large”) but “small”
extended family was the typical residential unit. However, in more essential respects – economic,
social, and political, extended families had clear priority over their nuclear parts (see, e.g.,
Diakonoff 1985; Diakonoff et al. 1989: I, 57–72).
62 Characteristically, Dmitri Dozhdev, criticizing the traditional, that is in light of the
sib/clan theory, glance at institutional evolution of early Rome, writes in introduction to his article
(2004/2000: 389) as follows:
The below picture of the formation of the Roman state, the suggested
legal evaluations and the attempt to find out a continuous line that
determines its specific features as a version of the political development
are based on the recognition of the civil community (civitas) as the
phenomenological and conceptual kernel of the problem. Rome was
founded in the urban epoch.
63 Among such rare cases are medieval Thailand, Laos, and the Malabar Coast of India
(Alaev 2000: 129).
64 In the ancient world, for instance, Sumer gave examples of communities of both types: