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Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx

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Chiefdoms and the emergence of private property in land

D. Blair Gibson *

Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, El Camino College, 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, CA 90506, USA

Received 3 February 2007; revision received 1 August 2007

Abstract

A prevailing characteristic of complex, stratied societies is unequal access to critical resources, and in most cases land
is the most fundamental of those resources. Gaining an understanding how relations to land are transformed is viewed as
integral to revealing the origins of social inequality. Recent scholarship has proposed an evolution of property rights in
land from open access to private property, the latter condition having been attributed to nation states. However, some
scholars have concluded from their examinations of Early Medieval Irish texts that land within Irish chiefdoms was
regarded as a commodity. The analysis carried out in this paper reveals that in Early Medieval Ireland some land could
be considered to be private property, but the holding and transfer of land was restricted to chieftains and their dependents,
the lands of commoners being held communally. The closest counterpart to this mode of land ownership is the form of
feudalism proposed for the Classic and Post-Classic Maya.
2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Chiefdoms; Private property; Early Medieval Ireland; Social evolution; Social structure; Feudalism

A question: whence grows joint-husbandry?
From plurality of heirs. How is that? They rst
divide their shares and their holdings, and each
of them fences against the other and each of them
grants a precinct to the other. [From Bretha
Comaithchesa in Charles-Edwards, 1993, p. 47]
Introduction
The late great anthropologist Raymond Firth
undertook the rst analysis of the social structure
and workings of Polynesian chiefdoms. Probably
due to his orientation towards economics, his work
*
Fax: +1 310 660 6085.
E-mail address: dbgibson@elcamino.edu
on the indigenous societies of New Zealand and
Tikopia Island gave a place of prominence to the
allocation and control of agricultural resources.
On Tikopia Island all the lands of a chiefdom were
said to be owned by the chieftain, a land tenure sys-
tem now termed overlapping stewardship. Practical
extensions of this system of ownership were a power
to divest those who displeased the chieftain from
their land, and the fact that the chieftain on Tikopia
held the larger and better parcels (1957 [1936], p.
333, 340, 345; see also Earle, 1991). Present at the
outset, then, of the study of chiefdoms was the real-
ization that social inequality translated into eco-
nomic disparities: a chiefs control over his
populaces access to land was absolute. A logical
corollary of this state of aairs was that the private
ownership of land could not exist within these chief-

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Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
doms as commoners could neither own nor alienate
land.
While it has been possible to discern private
property relations in simpler societies with respect
to moveable personal objects and discrete xed
resources such as fruit trees, the conceptualization
of land as a private resource attains a separate sig-
nicance. This is because exclusive rights to land
subsume the resources xed upon it, and entails
rights of exclusion going beyond the realization of
economic gain (Bell, 1998). One of the principal
rights attached to land as private property is the
right to dispose of this resource without the obliga-
tion to consult with other interested parties (privi-
lege-right; Hunt, 1998, p. 9). To have alienated
land is a major step towards land attaining the qual-
ity of a commodity. To treat land as a commodity
entails the capability to acquire or dispose of dis-
crete parcels of land in person-to-person transac-
tions within a system of valuation. Conversely, the
appearance of a system of land valuation within a
society could be taken to signify that land is being
regarded as a commodity.
Overlapping stewardship, the progenitor of feu-
dal relations in land, is not equivalent to private
property (see Bell, 1998, p. 39; Bloch, 1961, pp.
115116). A right to temporarily proscribe access
to resources on the land and to control the alloca-
tion of land parcels to those of lesser status is not
tantamount to a right of absolute alienation.1 Reci-
procal obligations that existed between chieftain
and commoner, between lord and vassal, ensured
joint, if uneven, access of both parties to this pro-
ductive resource (Bloch, 1961, pp. 115116).
The examination of Irish ethnohistorical sources
from the Early Middle Ages reveals that during the
rst millennium AD that some categories of land
had attained the status of private property. How-
ever, the social restrictions that were attached to
the notion of private property in land limited the
extension of this concept, and land did not attain
the status of a pure commodity in the modern sense.
This analysis delves into both historical and
archaeological data relating to the Medieval chief-
doms within the western Irish province of Tuad-
mumu (anglicized Thomond: present-day Co.
Clare). It examines settlement data from both the
Late and High Middle Ages against the local indig-
enous system of nomenclature for land parcels to
1
This right is termed power by Robert Hunt (1998, p. 9).
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Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
determine whether this functioned as a true system
of land valuationevidence that could point to
the commodication of land. What emerges from
the analysis is a system of the social valuation of
landone that discriminated parcels into two cate-
gories according to the social status of the posses-
sor. Not only does this bifold system of land
tenure also seem to apply to settlement data from
the Early Middle Ages, but the pattern of settlement
exhibited by an eighth/ninth century chiefdom gives
clues as to dierences in the manner in which the
land was held by chieftains and commoners.
Expanding this discussion to include complex socie-
ties in regions outside Europe reveals that though
Irish (and by extension European) chiefdoms dif-
fered strongly from Polynesian chiefdoms with
regard to systems of land tenure, a close parallel
can be drawn with the Post-Classic Maya. Chief-
doms emerge from this study as the appropriate
context within which the emergence of both the con-
cept of private property as applied to land, and the
emergence of feudal relations should be studied.
The evolution of human relations to land: operative
concepts
The study of the permutations and emergence of
the concept of property in land has a rich history,
and as of late there has been a resurgence of interest
in the subject among archaeologists and historians
(cf. Davies, 2002; Davies and Fouracre, 1995; Earle,
2000; Hudson and Levine, 1996, 1999; Hunt and
Gilman, 1998). Property is one of the ways by
which people dene their relations to objects, and
the property concept, when applied to land, entails
a number of dimensions: conditions of use, rules
of inheritance, a right to allocate use to others,
and alienability (Earle, 1998, p. 91; Hunt, 1998).
From the basis of comparative ethnography Timo-
thy Earle has argued for the existence of a pattern
in the evolution of the conditions of land tenure
as a progressive expansion of these dimensions: as
societies became more complexexpanding in
scale, acquiring rst leaders then institutionalized
oces of leadership, and nally the apparatus of
the stateland became increasingly encumbered
with rules constraining access, use, and transmission
(Table 1). In this formulation, land initially acquires
the dimension of heritability in the contexts of what
he terms the local group (Johnson and Earle,
1987; sometimes termed segmentary societies; Ren-
frew and Bahn, 2004, p. 180). It is only within a
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
Table 1
Earle (1998, p. 91)
Property types Use Inheritance
Open access + +
Commons + +
Fief + +
Private + +
chiefdom or primitive state that land may be allo-
cated by one person to another, and it is only when
a society is organized into a nation state with a mar-
ket economy, that land may be alienated through
the mechanism of sale.
Earles scheme is somewhat problematic on a
number of accounts, not the least of which that it
appears to be too neat and elegant to be valid. To
make a few points, Robert Hunt has indicated the
conceptual ambiguity intrinsic to land use charac-
terized as open access and commons (Hunt, 1998,
pp. 1112). He does not consider open access to be
a concept relevant to a discussion of landed prop-
erty as such land is not property, and considers
commons to be a mode of tenure too easily confused
with open access. In the same vein, one could take
issue with the quality of heritability as it supposedly
applies to land held in commons by local groups.
The very notion of heritable property derives from
complex societies where an individual may be said
to own valuable, durable assets whose distribution
upon death becomes an important issue to surviving
kinsmen. Hence these assets are to some extent
alienable. Earle extends the concept of heritability
to societies in which concepts of ownership and
alienability are not extended to land; e.g. a Yano-
mamo may plant tree crops in a plot to which he
has access by virtue of belonging to a teri (village
community), but he does not individually own the
plot and would not have any conception of deeding
it as a parcel it to a kinsman. It is simply not tenable
to view the long-standing occupation and defense of
a territory by a community as tantamount to land
having acquired the dimension of heritability.
Earle nominates the ef as the prevailing prop-
erty type of chiefdoms and primitive/archaic states.
To seize upon ef as the representative mode of
land ownership of early states is to turn a blind
eye to the highly varied forms of land tenure that
existed within the primitive states of the European
Early Middle Ages alone, where in addition to efs
land was held in leasehold (precarium) and freehold
(allodium) (Bloch, 1961, pp. 164,172; Davies and
Fouracre, 1995). Ironically, if ef is held up as a
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3
Allocation Alienability Societal type
+ + Family level
+ + Local group
+ + Chiefdom/state
+ + Nation states
standard of landholding for primitive states, then
Earle cannot insist on heritability as a dimension
as, at least in theory if not in practice in the Early
Middle Ages, efs could not be inherited but instead
reverted to the superior lord upon the death of the
holder (Bloch, 1961, p. 190). They were then also,
for that matter, not alienable as they comprised a
part of the estate of the greater lord or monastery.
The property concept is itself problematic, as in
modern nation states it is conjoined with the notion
of ownership. Under ownership it is understood
that (1) the boundaries of the property are xed,
(2) one or a number of individuals holds exclusive
title to the property, (3) the owner enjoys use
rights of the property (subject to restrictions and
taxation imposed by local and state authorities),
and (4) the owner enjoys rights of transmission
and sale. In Western Europe ownership is a con-
cept that only emerges in post-feudal contexts, as
the sources for the European Middle Ages more fre-
quently refer to possession (possessio) of land
(Davies and Fouracre, 1995, p. 9). Estates were ini-
tially created through military conquest or a recast-
ing of the relationships between a chieftain and the
population of a district. Therefore, the possession of
an estate was primarily concerned with the relation-
ship between lord and vassal, and only secondarily
involved a relationship of lord to land. The estates
of lesser lords were acquired from superior lords,
and the estate would have held rent-paying peas-
ants, so title to land was nested, not exclusive, and
entailed rights and obligations determined by social
rank. Further, the peasant, who was not the land-
owner, used the land and passed on a portion (or
all, if demesne land) of the produce to the lord,
who possessed the estate. In pre-modern or non-
Western contexts it would then be better to use
the term land tenure (as Earle does in parenthe-
ses) rather than ownership or property.
Useful distinctions have been made between
communal, common, and private forms of land ten-
ure (Colin, 1998), and these will be the operative
modes of land tenure that will be explored in this
study. Members can restrict access to land held in
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
4 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
common, but cannot dictate how it is to be used by
individual households. Under communal land ten-
ure, a community can both restrict access to land
and also dictate how it is to be used. The owners
of private property can exclude others from the
land, and dispose of it without restrictions (Colin,
1998, pp. 318319). Communal forms of land tenure
are predominantly associated with family-level soci-
eties and some segmentary societies such as the
Nuer (Evans-Pritchard, 1940, pp. 6165). Land held
in common is a system of tenure associated with
other segmentary societies such as the Kohistanis
of northwestern Pakistan where consensual systems
exist to regulate access to pasture lands and to allo-
cate prots from the harvesting of timber (Keiser,
1991, pp. 6469) I will propose below that private
property is encountered at rst in some chiefdom-
level societies and later in states.
While I agree with Earle that there is a rough
association between systems of land tenure and a
societies level of socio-cultural integration, one
must also allow that within a society that the social
rules of land utilization may vary commensurate
with the manner in which the land is to be used
(shing/foraging/horticulture/agriculture/arborcul-
ture/grazing), and even by season as in the case of
the transhumant Nuer. In more complex societies,
emergent social stratication may further dictate
varied, coexisting forms of land tenure. As will be
made clear in this paper, several modes of land ten-
ure did coexist within complex Irish chiefdoms of
the Early Middle Ages as a consequence of an emer-
gent class-structure.
Social structure and land demarcation in the Early
Medieval Irish legal sources
During the seventh and eighth centuries AD legal
maxims used by a class of professional Irish jurists
in dispute resolution were committed to writing.
These are the principal ethnohistoric sources of
information on social and economic topics for the
island. In these Early Medieval texts social organi-
zation and land demarcation are topics that receive
explicit treatment. The terms tuath (chiefdom) and
morthuath (great tuath) denote the larger political
units that show up in the law texts, governed,
respectively, by chieftains (r) and paramount chief-
tains (r riurech). It is clear from documentary evi-
dence that these were nested political units, the
tuatha (pl. of tuath) were embedded within the
morthuath. In the law texts De Fodlaib Cineoil Tua-
Please cite this article in press as: Gibson, D.B., Chiefdoms and the emergence of private property in land, J. Anthropol.
Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
thi, Uraicecht Becc, and Crth Gablach a tuath is
described in terms of the number of lineages and
sublineages that composed it (Fig. 1). These texts
also enumerate the grades of leaders and other aris-
tocrats of the tuath and morthuath. It is clear from
the way that they are described that the tuath was
not thought of as a unit possessing a denite size
in terms of spatial extent, but as a polity with a spe-
cic social constitution and descent structure.
The law texts of the eighth century identify the
lineage as the basic corporate group and describe
it as a series of nested segments, distinguished by
the proximity of male ancestors to a central line of
descent (Fig. 1). The group that held land in com-
mon, rather than just having title to inheritance,
was the derbne, a lineage sharing a common
great-grandfather (O Corrain, 2005, p. 553). Its lea-
der was called the agae ne. The derbne held a
block of land in common called ntiu. This group
marked the boundaries of their collective holding
with pillar stones dedicated to prominent ancestors
(Charles-Edwards, 1976, 1993, pp. 417 418).
Charles-Edwards extrapolates from laws concerning
trespass that
. . .the lawyer tended to think of the Irish coun-
tryside as divided up into clusters of holdings
belonging to the members of a single kindred.
Each house was surrounded by its own faithche,
probably a block of fenced land held in undi-
vided ownership by the householder. The houses
of a kindred would not normally form a nucle-
ated settlement, but rather a cluster which could
be unied by intermingled arable and co-opera-
tive farming. (1993, pp. 420421; see also the
opening quotation of this paper).
Fig. 1. The social structure of an eighth century AD simple Irish
chiefdom as presented in the law texts.
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
As the opening quotation of this paper indicates,
the individual households that made up the derbne
subdivided its common territory, and then erected
fences around their individual holdings (Charles-
Edwards, 1993, p. 64, 417, 419; O Corrain, 2005,
pp. 554555). Heptad 46 lists the torandaile as one
of the seven fences of a neighborhood, which Fergus
Kelly takes as marking the boundary between two
holdings (2000, p. 377). Charles-Edwards goes on
to infer from the discussion of trespass in Bretha
Comaithchesa that pasturage was fenced, and ara-
ble land was not, and that members of the derbne
constituted a group, a comingaire, that herded its
cattle jointly (1993, p. 421).
Land in Early Medieval Ireland
Space limitations prohibit a complete discussion
of the very interesting topic of the manner in which
land and its valuation was presented by the Irish
Early Medieval textual sources. However, the main
dimensions of the paradigm dier little from the
contemporary situation in Ireland in the authors
experience. The texts state explicitly that land was
valued in accordance with the concerns of the lar-
gely pastoral Early Medieval economy. A distinc-
tion was made between arable, potentially arable,
and non-arable land (Mac Niocaill, 1971; O Cor-
rain, 2005, p. 553). Land was valued in accord with
whether it could be used for both grazing and till-
age, the number of cattle it could carry, its position
with respect to roadways, and the presence of any
other exploitable resources such as ore or streams.
Though the eighth century text Tr Cumaile states
explicitly that woods could be appropriated by the
creation of a fence or ditch around them, unappro-
priated land is also mentioned (Mac Niocaill, 1971,
p. 85). Fergus Kelly deduces from the laws that
unappropriated bog or mountain land was held in
common by the tuath, and that all members had
equal access to it (2000, p. 406).
Aristocratic land tenure: land as a commodity?
The laws identify an agriculturally productive
expanse of land that was attached to a chieftain,
called mruig rg (rg gen. of r = chieftain; Charles-
Edwards, 1993, p. 111, 116; Kelly, 2000, p. 403).
References associating mruig rg with inauguration
rituals would seem to indicate that it was attached
to the oce, rather than to the person or family
of the chieftain (Kelly, 2000, p. 403). If this were
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5
true its boundaries may have been relatively station-
ary, as inauguration sites did not shift position
markedly through time (Gibson, 1995).
When the law texts were rst committed to writ-
ing in the eighth century AD it is clear that buying
(do-oggel) selling (renaid), and renting (fochraic)
already existed as economic concepts, though the
rst two terms are most frequently applied to move-
able property. However, some texts also seem to
imply that land could be a commodity as well (O
Corrain, 2005, p. 554). Both Thomas Charles-
Edwards and Fergus Kelly have pointed to a pas-
sage in the eighth century Additamenta section
of Patrician texts from the Book of Armagh con-
cerning a chiefdom confederacy known as the Lai-
gen as evidence for an Early Medieval market in
land (Charles-Edwards, 1993, p. 77; Kelly, 2000,
p. 420).2 Though it has the feeling of a Rumplestilt-
skinesque fable, the text is worth examining for
what it implies about social attitudes towards land:
Cummen and Brethan purchased O chter Achid
(Upper Pasture) together with its possessions in
wood, plain, and meadow, with its enclosure
and its herb-garden. Hence half of this patrimony
belongs absolutely to Cummen, in house, in man,
until her chattels be paid to her, that is, three
ounces of silver, and a can of silver, and a neck-
lace worth three ounces, and a circlet of gold (cal-
culated) according to ancient measurements and
ancient dimensions(?).
Cummen made a mantle which was sold to Elad-
ach macc Mael Odar (of the Osraige, d. 738 AD;
Mac Niocaill, 1972, p. 125), chieftain of Crem-
thenn, for a brown horse. That horse was sold
to Colman of the Britons (Abbott of Slane, d.
751 AD) for a cumal of silver. That cumal went
chter Achid [amended
to the additional price of O
translation of Bieler, 1979, p. 175].
This passage ts into a mold whereby Early
Medieval ecclesiastics explained how religious foun-
dations came by their land through the sympathy of
noble men and women. The property in question is
2
Unless Patrick was used in this passage metaphorically, the
text telescopes a missionary of the late fth century with an abbot
and chieftain of the eighth century. Added to the chronological
distortion the geographical segregation of the named actors, I
would doubt, then, that this is a contemporary account (Kelly,
2000, p. 420). Most likely it was committed to writing after the
deaths of all individuals.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
6 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
described as a patrimony (orba), or land received
through inheritance. In a prior passage Cummen
receives land made over to her by Ernene, who
one can safely presume to have been both a chief-
tain and her father, which she then in turn
bequeaths to Patrick. It seems to be clear from her
brideprice that she was of a noble family. Though
the prior passage identies her as a nun, celibacy
was nor a requirement of ecclesiastics in this period
so Brethan could be a husband (Bitel, 1990, p. 105).
The joint ownership described in the text with
Brethan follows the model of marriage to a landless
man in which a mans family cannot raise brideprice
and the woman retains control over a portion of
kin-land (Kelly, 2000, pp. 415416). One reading
of this text is that Brethan could have acquired
Cummens interest in the land by the payment of
brideprice, but that Cummen cleverly raises the
money herself to gain control of the land, which
one may assume she then bequeaths as a compli-
ment to her prior endowment to the church. There-
fore the buying in this case seems take the form of
a fantastic manipulation of a social transaction,
rather than a mundane economic business aair.
The implied message of this tract is that land was
not typically bought and sold.
In the law book the Crith Gablach it is said of the
fer fothlai (man of withdrawal) The surplus of his
cattle, of his cows, his swine, his sheep, that his
own land cannot bear and that he cannot sell for
land, that he himself does not need, he gives in capital
to acquire clients (Mac Neill, 1923, p. 293). Another
legal text, Cain Aicillne, disapproves of members of
lineages selling their portions of kin land, and pro-
mulgates the right of the derbne to veto a transac-
tion not meeting with its approval (Kelly, 1988, p.
100). Finally, the Corus Besgnai and other texts state
that members of the intelligentsia and craftsmen
could either purchase land from the proceeds of the
exercise of their professions, or that they received
grants of land from chieftains (Kelly, 2000, p. 419).
The sense of the information concerning the pur-
chase and sale of land contained in the law texts is
that it was a possibility, but that it was rare or sub-
ject to social constraints. Those identied as pur-
chasers of land are either aristocrats, or in the
case of the fer fothlai an aspiring aristocrat, or in
the case of craftsmen and poets specialists that were
attached to aristocrats. Those that sell, or more
often, make grants of land are invariably chieftains.
It is therefore fair to conclude that land purchase as
portrayed in the Early Medieval texts belonged to
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Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
an elite class of social transaction. One can safely
infer from the ethnohistoric sources then that pri-
vate land ownership did exist in Early Medieval Ire-
land, but that it was restricted to the aristocracy. By
logical extension, on the lower social rungs then it
would seem that the tenure of land was communal,
rather than personal.
Summary
The Irish legal texts indicate that in the eighth
century land was held collectively by a lineage, but
that this land was parceled out to individual house-
holds within the lineage. Boundary walls delimited
the individual holdings within the lineage territory.
For the commoner social stratum then communal
land tenure prevailed where access to and disposal
of land was restricted, but few restrictions were
placed on how a lineage member used his portion
(Colin, 1998). Some forms of land use approached
commodication in that the law texts state that land
could be rented (McLeod, 1992, pp. 7274).
A special territory was associated with the oce
of chieftain. A concept of land as a commodity,
and hence private property, did exist, but its appli-
cation seems to have been limited to the land under
the control of the chieftain. The signicance of this
last nding to the wider consideration of chiefdoms
and property rights is that contrary to the situation
on Tikopia there was no Irish conception of a chief-
tain owning all of the land of his polity, at least not
until the Tudor Period (Nichols, 1972, pp. 22, 69
70; Simms, 1987, p. 39). Instead, individual lineages
maintained an autonomy of ownership over their
tracts. Chieftains either directly owned or controlled
the largest amount of land within their polities, land
of high quality (Duy, 1981).
One cannot simply accept as true the information
contained within the Early Medieval Irish ethnohis-
toric sources without subjecting it to independent
verication. The inuence exerted upon these texts
by symbolic systems of classication is well known
(Patterson, 1985), as are also the substantial dicul-
ties of interpretation. It is therefore imperative to
examine the constitution of Irish Medieval social
groups and their relationships towards land with
independent sources of information. This study will
move to an examination of two such independent
relevant bodies of evidence: the land divisions that
have survived on deeds and maps, and a set of
well-preserved archaeological landscapes. This
examination will commence with a comparison of
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
16th and 14th century documentary sources pertain-
ing to a chiefdom in northern Tuadmumu against
contemporary settlement data in order to come to
an understanding of the Gaelic system of land
denominations. The objective is to determine
whether this functioned as a system of valuation
within the context of a market in land. Then the
results of this analysis will be viewed against the
archaeological evidence for the organization of land
tenure stemming from a chiefdom of the ninth cen-
tury AD in the same locale.
Land demarcation in Late Medieval Ireland: the
chiefdom of Gragans in the Burren
In the 16th century what is now Co. Clare in the
west of Ireland was a primitive state called Tuad-
mumu (Eng. North Munster, anglicized Tho-
mond), ruled by an OBrien king. Over a span of
300 years lineages of the OBriens and Macnamaras
had displaced a number of the formerly autono-
mous chiey ramages3 within Thomond, but some
ramages persisted, retaining varying degrees of inde-
pendence. One such autonomous chiefdom, named
Gragans after the chieftains seat, lay in the far
north of Tuadmumu in a rugged region called the
Burren (Ir. Boireann rocky place, Figs. 2 and 3).
When the English under Elizabeth I completed the
subjugation of Ireland in the late 16th century
armed conict in Tuadmumu was averted by means
of a treaty known as the Tripartite Deed (White,
1893, Appendix 1) drawn up between the OBrien
king and chieftains of Tuadmumu on one hand,
and the representative of Elizabeth, Sir John Perrot,
on the other. Among the signatories of the treaty
were the chieftain and tanaiste (heir-apparent, in
actuality a vice-chief) of Gragans. This is fortunate
for the treaty lists the names of the sub-territories of
Gragans at the time of its composition, in 1585.
The names of some of the territories of the Gra-
gans chiefdom refer to topographic entities, e.g. Gle-
ann na Manach the Valley of the Monks, or to an
aristocratic lineage, or section, e.g. Sliocht (lineage)
Donnchadh Ua Lochlainn (Fig. 3). The territories of
Gragans were occupied primarily by sections of the
OLochlainn ramage, and each section had its own
capital in the form of a tower house occupied by the
ramage leader, or leaders if the ramage had ssioned.
3
I am using Firths term (1957) in preference to Paul Kirchos
term conical clan (1955).
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7
Within a section territory of the Gragans chief-
dom parcels of land were distinguished by a number
of designations in Gaelic, such as baile (anglicized
bally), ceathramha (carrow, Eng. quarter),
seiseach (sixth), and seisreach (plowland).
Down to the present day scholars have supposed
that these terms referred to a rational system of land
subdivision, consisting of nested units of a determi-
nant number (Hogan, 1929, pp. 175179; McErlean,
1983; N Ghabhlain, 1996, pp. 5051). Since the
19th century all small parcels of land within a parish
or barony have been referred to indiscriminately as
townlands. However, one can still often recognize
the former designation of a parcel within the Gaelic
system, preserved as an element of the parcels
name. Otherwise, a parcels rank is stated in surviv-
ing indigenous land deeds, or in the census of the
landholdings of Ireland carried out following the
Cromwellian wars in the late 17th century (Siming-
ton and Mac Giolla Choille, 1967).
In the list of territories of the Gragans chiefdom
contained within the Tripartite Deed the baile unit
shows up only once, if one accepts that the Towne
of the Gragannes represents a translation of Baile
na Greagnais (on the equivalence of town and
baile see McErlean, 1983, p. 320). This baile ter-
ritory became the two modern townlands of Gra-
gans North and Gragans South, which surround
the 16th century seat of the OLochlainn chieftain
at the Gragans tower house (Fig. 3). It is evident
that this smaller tract was singled out for inclusion
in the treaty, which lists mostly section territories,
because it was the demesne territory of the OLoch-
lainn chieftain.
In the Burren this relationship between aristo-
cratic seats and bailte (pl. of baile) seems obvious
enough. Of the 20 townlands of Burren Barony with
bally as a prex, or town as a sux, nine of these
townlands contain or are immediately adjacent to a
tower house or tower house site. Perhaps more telling
from a chronological perspective, a further six
bally townlands contain cashel sites. Cashels are
indigenous Medieval settlements enclosed by thick
circular walls of stone, and as will become apparent
below they were occupied by individuals of higher
rank. There are two cashel sites, Ballydanaher and
Ballayallaban, that enclose the remains of later
Medieval structures. The cashel wall of Ballydanaher
encloses a towerhouse, indicating that it was the
abode of an aristocrat. Likewise the gatehouse of a
chieftains seat at Cathair Mhor (C-79) in Ballyall-
aban townland has been recently excavated (Fig. 4).
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8 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx

Fig. 2. County Clare and Burren Barony. The dot indicates the location of the cashel site Cathair Commain.

This has been shown to have been a late (17th cen-
tury?) insertion into a preexisting cashel (Fitzpatrick,
1999). A pocket of shell from underneath the gate-
house has produced a radiocarbon date of 1308 AD
(Fitzpatrick, 2001, p. 53).
Other smaller territories within the Gragans
chiefdom are named in the Tripartite Deed. One
of them, Muccinis, contains two tower houses of
the same name that were held by sons of the
OLochlainn chieftain (Fig. 3). It is tempting to
see Carraig Lochain as a demesne territory of one
of the two tower houses in Muccinis. Tower houses
are conventionally dated to between the 15th and
16th centuries. The association of the baile territo-
rial unit with the Burrens tower houses shows that
the demesne territory concept was bound to the
tower house aristocratic residencea demesne terri-
tory inevitably existed around a tower house.4 This
4
The use of the term demesne is contrary to of Duys term
mensal for this type of land, but I think nearer to standard usage
(Duy, 1981, p. 8).
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nding is not surprising, as a similar geographical
link of demesne territory to aristocratic center also
obtains in Early Medieval Wales and England
(Jones, 1976).
The demesne territories of the OLochlainn chief-
tain and his sons are clustered within a uniform
physiographic entity, Gleann Argddae, a valley
which opens up onto Galway Bay to the north. A
section of this territory bears the name Muintir Arg-
aid (The Family of Argddae). This territory is coter-
minous with the parish of Rathbourney (N
Ghabhlain, 1996, p. 56). A number of lines of evi-
dence indicate that the parishes of Rathbourney in
the Burrens center and Drumcreehy to the north
along the coast were subdivisions of a preexisting
territory (Gibson, 1990, pp. 116117; 2000, p.
251). Gleann Eidhneach, said to be wholly owned
by the Bishop of Kilfenora in the 17th century
Books of Survey and Distribution (Simington and
Mac Giolla Choille, 1967), and Sliocht Oirial may
also be subdivisions of this large territory. Not only
did the chieftain of the OLochlainns and his sons
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx 9

Fig. 3. The 16th century chiefdom of Gragans. Dots indicate tower houses on a list dating to 1584 AD, squares are tower houses not on
the list, open squares are tower houses presumed to post-date 1584 AD, circles are cashels.

have land within Muintir Argaid, but the chief-

Fig. 4. The cashel of Cathair Mhor.
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doms judges, the ODavorens, did as well. McEr-
lean has noted a pattern whereby demesne land
(lucht tighe) was attached to aristocratic oces,
including those of the indigenous intelligentsia
(McErlean, 1983). In this instance it would seem
that the section territory of the leading ramage of
the OLochlainns had been subdivided between the
proximate descendants of the chieftain, the ramage
of the chief judge, and the bishop in the case of Gle-
ann Eidhneach. Other branches of the chiey
ramage controlled other section territories.
Apart from the territories putatively associated
with the tower houses of leading aristocrats, no
smaller land divisions appear in the Tripartite
Deed. However, the extent of the listed territories
is rendered in terms of quarters, a translation of
the Irish ceathramha land unit. The word quar-
ter should not be taken to signify that parcels
of this denomination represent a fourfold subdivi-
sion of a larger land entity. Ceathramha is a refer-
ence to the symbolic tendency to see all territorial
entities as being four-sided or divisible into four
parts (e.g. the four provinces of Ireland). This land
unit is also a tacit acknowledgement of the exis-
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
10 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
tence of other denominations of land parcels
besides the baile. With the exception of single
quarters, quarters are always listed in even num-
bered quantities and the remainder is rendered in
thirds (e.g. two quarters and two-thirds parts of
a quarter). Therefore in practice it was more
common to divide land into threes, conforming
to principles of Celtic numerology and its empha-
sis on the number three.
The antiquity of the Late Medieval land division
pattern: the 14th century
A text which predates the Tripartite Deed by two
hundred years gives insights as to the antiquity of
the system of land valuation in Co. Clare. This text
is Suim Ciosa Ui Briain Account of the Rents of
the OBrien, an accounting of the rents due from
properties located within three chiefdoms in north-
ern Tuadmumu (Thomond) to the OBrien king.
James Hardiman dated Suim Ciosa Ui Briain to
the middle of the 14th century, and T.J. Westropp
dated it to between 1380 and 1390 (Hardiman,
1828; Westropp, 1899, p. 348) (Table 2). The lands
of what were to become the Gragans chiefdom,
called in this text Cargi a Ledboiren (The Rock on
the Rocky Region?)5 (Hardiman, 1828, p. 42), are
detailed in three sections in the text. The geograph-
ical clustering of the parcels and comparison with
the secular territories reconstructed above from
the Tudor sources reveal that these sections repre-
sent a distinction that was made between land
owned by the chieftains section, and the remaining
lands of the chiefdom.
At rst glance Suim Ciosa Ui Briain does not
present a uniform system of land valuation. Indeed,
it seems from the text that local traditions deter-
mined the terms that were applied to designate dif-
ferent classes of land parcels; for example
ceathramha (quarters) predominates in the portion
of the text pertaining to the neighboring chiefdom
of Corcumurad, and seiseach (sixths) was used in
the Burren. However, there are patterns in so far
as in the case of Corcumruad combinations of smal-
ler land parcels are identied as portions of bailte. It
is reasonable to assume that land units with a value
greater than one seisach were similarly bailte in the
neighboring chiefdom of the Burren.
5
Cargi (Carrac) may have been the name of the contemporary
chieftains seat.
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The second section of the Burrens list of lands in
Suim Ciosa Ui Briain concerns the section territory
of the OLochlainn chiey ramage. It contains as
least twice as many bailte units as the other sections,
which one might expect under the presumption of a
greater clustering of aristocratic residences within
the chieftains territory. In contrast, seiseach land
units in the rental outnumber baile land units by a
31 margin. Of equal signicance is that the baile
units name territories within which tower houses
were to be built at a later point, as is the case of Bai-
le Danar, Gleanna Slaod, and Baile Ua Math-
gamhna. Other territory names in the baile
category allude to the existence of a Daingen (for-
tress), or refer to other types of likely aristocratic
seats. In the Burren sites which carry the toponym
cathair (dwelling place) are invariably cashels, and
settlements enclosed by earthen banks have the top-
onym liss.
These data indicate that in the latter part of the
14th century, the system of territorial divisions
was in place, and that it functioned the same way
as it did in the 16th century. The chiefdom capital
and section capitals were located within their sec-
tion territories, and the parcel of land situated
around the residence of the chieftain or of a section
chieftain, a demesne territory termed a baile, was
directly owned by them. Non-aristocratic lineages
managed and inhabited territories termed seiseach.
The distinction between the two types of land units
was therefore primarily social, and only secondarily
scalar. The Gaelic system of land denominations did
not therefore function as a system of valuation
within a land market. Instead, it signals the exis-
tence of a bifold system of land tenure: land was dis-
tinguished as to whether it was held by commoners
or aristocrats.
Settlement and land allotment in the eighthninth
centuries AD
Textual sources for settlement in Thomond prior
to the 14th century refer only to chiefdom capitals,
and are largely silent on the disposition of settle-
ment in the Burren. Recourse must be made then
to archaeological data for a complete glimpse of
the settlement pattern of an earlier period. The
Cahercommaun Project was a survey project initi-
ated in 1984 with the objective of reconstructing
the congurations of the chiefdom centered upon
the trivallate cashel site of Cahercommaun (Cathair
Commain; The Dwelling of Comman Fig. 5). This
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx 11

Table 2
List of land units from Suim Ciosa U Briain in Cargi a Ledboiren (The Burren) (B) = baile (S) = seisach
Section 1 Section 2 Section 3
Baile .G. Martan(B) Baile U Mathgamhna(B) Baile U Conrao(S)
Cathair Medain(B) Baile U Murcha(S) Liss mBerchain(S)
Baile Danar(B) Caltrach(S) Cathair Lapain(S)
Cathair Polla Glenna Slaod(B) Cathair Mec Oilille Sella(S)
Liss Moran(S) Baile U Tuathaill(B)
Liss na Liathanach(B)? Formail(S)
Rathneach(S) Cathra(S)
Ceapacaib(S) Liss na hAlba(S)
Cnocain(S) Muireda(S)
Urluine (S) Fanad Fodhman(B)
Sesreadh ODonaill(S) Doirinib(B)?
Croibidhi(S) Liss Flaithri(B)
Muidhi Domnaill(S) Baile U Mael-Ceir(B)
Matar Briain(S) Liss Guagain(S)
Fanadh Gealbhain(S) Baile U Comultain(S)
Cathair Mec U Gril(S) Baile U Catail(S)
Tulglaise(S) Daingen(B)
Mingeach(S) Cnocan Tighe Murcha(B)
Aenrig Beg(S) Coill Breac(S)
Baile U Ustadh(S) Liss na Luacharnaidi(S)
Ruda(S)
Baile U Gedail(B)
Fidhnaig(B)
Daingen(B)
Baile U Beachain(S)

chiefdom was arbitrarily given the name Tulach
Commain (The Burial Mound of Comman) after
the Gaelic name of the territory within which the
site was situated. The archaeological survey had
eld seasons in 19841986, 1990, and 1993. Caher-
commaun was excavated by Hugh ONeill Hencken
of Harvard in 1934 (1938). His assessment of the
nds resulting from the dig, a reinterpretation of
them in 1999, and radiocarbon dates on bone stem-
ming from the 1934 excavation (Table 3) consis-
tently center the occupation of the cashel at the
close of the 8th and beginning of the ninth century
AD (Cotter, 1999; Gibson, 1990; Hencken, 1938).
A core area within a 2.5-km radius of Cahercom-
maun was subjected to an intensive, systematic
blanket reconnaissance survey (Fig. 6). The survey
revealed a dense concentration of Early Medieval
settlement. The pattern of settlement within this
core sector of the chiefdom has a distinctive mor-
phology (Fig. 7). Cahercommaun is seen to be clo-
sely surrounded by a ring of less substantial
univallate cashels: Caislean Gearr (C-2), Cathairn
Maol (C-43), and Cathracha an tSagairt (C-48ac).
However, only the rst two sites are true cashels
the enclosures of Cathracha an tSagairt are proba-
bly corrals. A seriation of the cashels of the study
area was undertaken which combined a pattern-rec-
ognition analysis of the standing architecture of
their enclosing walls with other dimensions, such
as enclosure wall thickness (Gibson, 1990, pp.
272328). This analysis indicated that Cathairn
Maol and Caislean Gearr date to a later point in
the Middle Ages and so were not contemporary
with Cahercommaun.
The only nearby substantial univallate cashel
likely to have been contemporary with Cahercom-
maun is C-34, which is located across the ravine
1.2 km to the north of Cahercommaun (Figs. 8
and 9).6 Cahercommaun and C-34 are thick-walled
cashels situated in analogous physiographic locales,
and are associated with similar eld layouts. Both
are on the edge of a plateau that has a soil cover
that ranges from thin to non-existent. They over-
look the Carron depression, which has expanses of
deeper soil. C-34 is then the sole exemplar of a sec-
ond tier of settlement.
Situated upon the plateau to the northeast of
both Cahercommaun and C-34 are yet even smaller
settlements with low and rudely built enclosure
6
Fitzpatrick remarks upon a potentially Medieval cut stone
entrance to Caislean Gearr (Fitzpatrick, 2001, p. 58).

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12 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx

Fig. 5. Cathair Commain and its associated eld boundary walls and corrals.

Table 3
Radiocarbon Dates for Cahercommaun
Locus Material Laboratory number Uncalibrated date Calibrated date
Unprovenienced Bone: Bos QL-4048 720 70 AD 781 AD
Distal end of humerus 681886 AD
Unprovenienced Bone: Bos QL-4127 740 120 AD 790 AD
Humerus 670970 AD
References for datasets (and intervals) used: Stuiver and Pearson (1986) and Pearson et al. (1986).

walls. These sites constitute a third tier of settle-
ment. In close proximity to C-34 are the modest
enclosed settlements of C-32 and C-278 (Fig. 10);
and located close to Cahercommaun are C-377, C-
360, C-353, C-188, and C-360 (Fig. 7).
I believe it to be a safe assumption that the three
tiers of Early Medieval settlement that can be shown
to have existed within the chiefdom of Tulach Com-
main correspond to the three principal social tiers of
this chiefdom. As Hencken postulated over 60 years
ago Cahercommaun was the chieftains capital
(1938, pp. 12). Cashels of the second tier such as
C-34 were residences of sub-aristocrats representing
the heads of lineages of the chiefdoms ramage, and
the most humble class of enclosed settlements were
the homesteads of commoners.
It now remains to try to understand the system of
land tenure of the eighthninth centuries for what it
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was. This goal is made dicult in the sector of the
plateau in the immediate vicinity of Cahercommaun
due to 4000 years of continuous settlement and
wall-building activities. The reconstruction of the
Early Medieval settlements and eld systems dis-
played in Fig. 7 was derived from a principal com-
ponents analysis of metric attributes of the
surviving sections of the stone eld boundary walls,
taken together with the morphology of the sites and
eld shapes (Gibson, n.d.). However, due to dier-
ential survival of features and the cooption of for-
mer eld boundary walls by later builders, the
patterns in Fig. 7 should be viewed as an educated
surmise.
To begin with, Cahercommaun is encircled by
three concentric enclosure walls which were likely
to have advertised the enclosed area as the habita-
tion of a personage of nemed or holy status
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx 13

Fig. 6. The townlands that were subjected to intensive survey by the Cahercommaun Project.

(Fig. 5). Chieftains were so regarded on the evidence
of the law texts. The area immediately beyond this is
taken up with a series of roughly rectangular con-
centric elds, which in actuality are subdivisions of
an encompassing rectangular area. A cashel-type
wall, W-7, denes one boundary of this area, that
opposite the entrance to Cahercommaun. Analo-
gous rectangular or sub-rectangular elds are seen
to be appended to other settlements such as C-34,
C-32, C-278, and C-360 (Figs. 8 and 10). It seems
to have been the pattern for settlements to have at
least two such yards, one larger rectangular yard
and one smaller D shaped yard. Perhaps these
attached enclosures correspond to the lubgort (gar-
den) and airlise (that which is in front of the lis)
(Kelly, 2000, p. 368; Stout, 1997, p. 37).
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The rectangular enclosure immediately to the
east of Cahercommaun could be a macha (milking
yard) (Fig. 5). There is a cattle enclosure across
the ravine from Cahercommaun to the immediate
north, though it may pertain to the later cashels
on this side of the ravine. To judge from their irreg-
ular shapes and thin walls the two enclosures of
Cathracha an tSagairt also had this function. Tees-
kagh townland was surveyed in its entirety by the
Cahercommaun Project, and was found to lack
unambiguous Early Medieval settlement. Though
without informant knowledge it is dicult to know
precisely where the boundaries between holdings
lay, it is possible that the eastern boundary of the
chieftains demesne was demarcated by walls D-1
and 75, and by the gully extending from a spring
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
14 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
Fig. 7. Proposed reconstruction of eld boundary walls and settlements surrounding Cathair Commain dating to the Early Medieval
Period.
below the source of the Seven Streams of Teeskagh
to the cli edge to the southwest (Figs. 7 and 8). If
this presumption is correct, it would seem that only
a modest portion of the plateau was dedicated to the
exclusive use by the chieftain at Cahercommaun.
However, the demesne territory would have
extended to the lower-lying portions in Teeskagh
and Clooncoose townlands to the south, and possi-
bly to the ravines and a portion of the Carron
depression to the north as well.
Field boundary walls emanating from the inelds
surrounding the settlements apparently had two
purposes. Some seem to have established elds con-
gured as strips or blocks for the purposes of man-
aging livestock grazing. A few of these walls, such as
those reaching to the east of C-360, can be seen to
run up to the edge of a cli, and then continue on
from the base of the cli on lower ground (Fig. 7).
A wall such as this must have served a function
beyond livestock managementit must have had
the additional function of dening a swath of land
belonging to a household. Otherwise unambiguous
walls of the torandaile class, those that separate
the faiche holdings of the members of a lineage,
are dicult to distinguish in this analysis. It would
seem that three or more householdsC-288, C-
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353, and C-377were clustered together, and were
physically separated from C-360.7 Otherwise the
separation between households was not obvious.
The cashels C-34 and C-188 were the residences of
the leaders of lineages, as seems likely by their cen-
tral location within a settlement complex and larger
size. In contrast to the lowest level of settlement, C-
188 and C-34 were sited within large elds rather
than having large quadrilateral elds appended to
them. The residences of those belonging to the third
social tier were integrated with this eld. Such a
tightly integrated residential complex would seem
to reect a high level of social integration on the
part of Early Medieval Irish lineages.
Following the line of argument that the two non-
aristocratic settlement clusters discussed above rep-
resent lineages, it would seem that the ntiu territo-
ries of these sodalities were not separated by walls.
Instead, they would seem to have been set o by dis-
tance and natural features such as gullies. Some
other forms of boundary markers (e.g. cairns or pil-
7
The seriation of the stonework of the regions cashels suggests
that C-360 belongs to a period of the middle ages subsequent to
the occupation of Cahercommaun (Gibson, n.d.).
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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx 15

Fig. 8. Proposed eighth century AD lineage clusters and social demarcations of land surrounding Cathair Commain.

lar stones) may have existed, but these were not
detected through survey.
The apparent continuation of the plateaus eld
boundary walls onto adjacent but separate lower
areas, such as those associated with the C-360 com-
moner homestead, would indicate that each house-
hold was allocated a section of lower-lying land
below their settlements (Fig. 7). Commensurate with
this supposition, the position of Cathracha an tSag-
airt below Cahercommaun reinforces the inference
that this section of Clooncoose and Teeskagh town-
lands functioned as an exclusive grazing area of the
chieftain. Numerous writers have noted the typical
location of many Irish Early Medieval habitation
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sites on ridges and slopes (see Monk, 1998; Stout,
1997, p. 106, 122 for references and discussion). Typ-
ical explanations for this choice of siting include
drainage, wind avoidance, and defense from attack.
In this place and time drainage and wind avoidance
wouldnt have been considerations. In the karstic
landscape of the Burren water drains well from all
settings with the exception of the bottom of the Car-
ron depression, and the settlement system was situ-
ated in the windiest possible area. Though survey
evidence cannot oer a complete explanation, it is
likely that both defense and the ability to simulta-
neously exploit the resources of two physiographic
zones were important considerations.
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16 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx

Fig. 9. The cashel C-34, the proposed residence of the leader of a commoner lineage of the Tulach Commain chiefdom.

Fig. 10. The lineage cluster associated with the cashel C-34, Tullycommon townland.

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D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
Except for the eld boundary walls and facilities
surrounding Cahercommaun, it does not seem that
the construction of the eld boundary wall systems
was centrally coordinated. Though at places they
are linked together, the pattern of the walls suggests
that the elds were built out from the settlements,
each household having been responsible for build-
ing its own set of eld boundaries walls. The inter-
twining walls linked the closely spaced households
of a lineage together into a clachanan Irish coop-
erative farming community, as is apparent with
respect to the system associated with C-34 and the
cluster to the west of C-188.
Given the sinuous courses of the Early Medieval
walls and the profusion of associated corrals it is
safe to say that a principle function of these upland
systems was to manage livestock. The recovery of
9223 pounds of animal bones from the excavation
of Cahercommaun demonstrates the strongly pasto-
ral orientation of its inhabitants (Hencken, 1938, p.
74).
Conclusions
Settlement survey evidence from the eighth/ninth
century Cahercommaun settlement system supports
the argument that private property in land seems
to have been a concept of limited applicability. The
only strongly demarcated personal holding, as mea-
sured in boundary walls and the disposition of set-
tlement, seems to have been the precinct and
demesne territory of the chieftain. The ethnohistoric
sources inform us that a chieftain was free to make
grants of this land to favored dependents, subordi-
nates, churchmen, and family members, which the
lawyers characterized as sales of land in exchange
for services. I would not be as bold as to propose
that these highly restricted social transactions con-
stituted a market in land. It is more akin to the
well-known Medieval practice of enfeoment, a cor-
nerstone of feudalism.
Land would seem to have been treated as a com-
modity by the Middle Irish period (12th century) to
judge from commentary on the law tract Do Thua-
slucud Rudrad, which speaks directly of land pur-
chase (McLeod, 1992, p. 37). This period
witnessed a shift in settlement structure to a more
uniform dispersion of settlement across the land-
scape. However, the lineage clusters of the Early
Middle Ages and the aristocratic character of Irish
chiefdoms ensured that the system of ranked hold-
ings endured. It is clear that Gaelic land units were
Please cite this article in press as: Gibson, D.B., Chiefdoms and the emergence of private property in land, J. Anthropol.
Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
17
not elements of a system of land assessment based
purely upon extent. The primary signicance of land
valuation terms such as baile and seisrach was that
they identied the social ranking of the principal
holder of the parcel.
The ndings of this analysis throw into relief the
evolutionary scheme for the evolution of the prop-
erty concept proposed by Timothy Earle (see Table
1 above). Within the Irish chiefdoms land was held
communally by commoner lineages, alongside a sep-
arate demesne sector dominated by aristocrats.
Within this demesne sector the concept of private
property was developing in the absence of state
institutions. Rather than an evolution by discrete
stages, the process by which the concept of private
property in land emerged can be more aptly viewed
as a mosaic process, as encountered in living organ-
isms. Land ownership remained communal in the
commoner sector, but was assuming the characteris-
tics of private property in the elite sector. However,
the market transactions amounted to land trans-
fers solely between aristocratic sectorschieftains,
judges, and churchmen, and the documentary evi-
dence seems to indicate that transfers of possession
owed in a single directionfrom chieftain to either
class of aristocratic specialist.
One might be tempted to assume that the situa-
tion in Medieval Ireland, whereby the quality of
rights over land within a chiefdom reected the
social rank of the head of a ramage, constituted a
signicant and possibly singularly European devel-
opment. After all, Durrenberger (1998) has recently
described a similar set of attitudes and practices
concerning land in Medieval Iceland. One could cer-
tainly not characterize Irish Early Medieval land
tenure as a system of overlapping stewardship, as
this term has been applied to systems of land tenure
within Polynesian chiefdoms. The legal and archae-
ological sources would seem to agree upon the for-
mulation that the nobility and commoners of
Ireland held land within autonomous spheres, and
the law texts mirror this position when they state
plainly that the land of commoners was protected
from elite encroachment.8 Undeveloped land held
in common by commoners would also conform to
this interpretation.
8
One has to however vigorously agree with Durrenbergers
nding concerning the Icelandic law texts that what the texts state
concerning commoners rights, and what the actual situation was
were two very dierent things (1998, pp. 181182).
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
18 D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
However, land tenure and settlement systems
analogous to that of Early Medieval Ireland did
exist outside of Europe. Late- and Post-Classic low-
land Mayan society was strongly hierarchical and
organized into lineages (McAnany, 1995; Restall,
1997). The leadership of Mayan society also con-
sisted of lineage heads ranked into dierent social
levelsroyal, noble, and commoner (Culbert,
1974; Hammond, 1991; McAnany, 1995). The eth-
nohistoric sources for Post-Classic Yucatan indicate
that while Mayan lineages owned land collectively,
Mayan nobles owned private estates worked by
slaves (McAnany, 1995, p. 142; Roys, 1943, p. 34;
Thompson, 1999). Land owned by lineages could
not be sold by its members (McAnany, 1995, p.
96), but McAnany makes a reasonable argument
that households exercised a kind of limited owner-
ship over land due to the existence of signicant
capital investments in the form of orchards (McAn-
any, 1995, pp. 7478, 94). Surveys carried out
around the late Classic city of Coba show the
Mayan population to be dispersed, yet showing
nucleation both into clusters of households of pre-
sumably closely related male commoners, and
around the political center (Kintz, 1983b). Within
household clusters the residences of lineage leaders
could be identied by architectural features (Kintz,
1983a).
A feudal model was proposed by Adams and
Smith to characterize the social structure and tenor
of social relationships between the dierent levels of
authority within Classic and Post-Classic Period
Mayan political systems (1981). Recent research
has revealed that Mayan political systems were
not uniform through time and space, but below
the highest level of leadership Mayan polities may
have been broadly similar in organization. Some
of the qualities of feudalism listed by Adams and
Smith would seem to apply to all state-level societies
(horizontal family connections and vertical personal
obligations within the nobility), but there is agree-
ment that power in feudal societies was diused
amongst several levels of nobility (Adams and
Smiths rst criteria of feudalism).
Adams and Smiths second characteristic of feu-
dalism, that land was owned by the nobility but
worked by the commoners, has a direct bearing
upon this article. An elite monopoly on land cannot
be demonstrated either for Medieval Ireland or for
the Classic Period Maya. In both cases elite estates
were maintained separately from the holdings of
commoners, however, in both cases these were
Please cite this article in press as: Gibson, D.B., Chiefdoms and the emergence of private property in land, J. Anthropol.
Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001
worked by the unfree and lower-class common-
ersin Ireland as a part of patron-client obliga-
tions. Of greater moment, however, for a
denition of feudalism is the creation of ties of obli-
gation between the diering levels of nobility
though enfeoment of lower-ranking nobles by
higher-ranking nobles from land that the kings
and high nobility control. Enfeoment is an obvious
fact of the Irish Middle ageschieftains deeded
land to lesser nobles such as tanaiste (vice-chieftain)
and brithem (judges) in return for loyalty and ser-
vice. Mayan ethnohistoric sources indicate that
batabob (local administrators) could be appointed
and dismissed by kings (Freidel, 1983, p. 51), and
mounting epigraphic evidence indicates that his
was true of their structural Classic Period precedes-
sors, the sajalob, as well (Martin and Grube, 2000,
p. 19; Webster, 2002, p. 138). If the function of a
batob or sajal was to administer a province or dis-
trict remote from the capital, a logical corollary of
this arrangement would be that the estate which
supported this ocial was the kings to grant or
take away (Hammond, 1991, pp. 273274).
As Irish and Mayan societies were similarly
organized, with populations displaying analogous
geographical patterning, feudalismwith the stress
it places on the relationship between the pattern of
land ownership to the distribution of power, is
preferred as a descriptive model for the structure
of states and chiefdoms of the Irish and Maya.
In this paper, it is asserted that the dichotomy in
the conditions in land tenure between noble and
non-noble, the inability of the nobility to exert a
superior claim of ownership on the land of com-
moners, and the dependency of a section of the
lower nobility on the chiefdom leadership for
access to land were the basic preconditions for
feudalism.
Acknowledgements
The rst version of this paper was presented in
the session Settlement in Celtic Lands at the
37th International Congress on Medieval Studies
at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I thank the organizer
Mary Valante for inviting me. I acknowledge the
sponsorship of both the Earthwatch and University
Research Expeditions programs for the funding and
stang of the survey and excavations of the Caher-
commaun Project through its three seasons of eld-
work. I thank Timothy Earle, Fergus Kelly, and
Antonio Gilman for reading and submitting com-
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
D.B. Gibson / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology xxx (2007) xxxxxx
ments on drafts of this paper, the patient assistance
of David Freidel with the Mayan sources, and Rich-
ard Adams for bringing Mayan feudalism to my
attention at a Complex Society Group meeting sev-
eral years ago.
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Archaeol. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2007.08.001