Carneiro's Circumscription Theory is an influential theory of the role of warfare in state formation in political anthropology, created by anthropologist Robert Carneiro (1927- ).
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The theory begins with some assumptions. Warfare usually disperses people rather than uniting them. Environmental circumscription occurs when an area of productive agricultural land is surrounded by a less productive area such as the mountains, desert, or sea. Application of extensive agriculture would bring severely diminishing returns.
If there is no environmental circumscription, then losers in a war can migrate out from the region and settle somewhere else. If there is environmental circumscription, then losers in warfare are forced to submit to their conquerors, because migration is not an option and the populations of the conquered and conqueror are united. The new state organization strives to alleviate the population pressure by increasing the productive capacity of agricultural land through, for instance, more intensive cultivation using irrigation.
Primary state development occurred in the six original states of the Nile Valley, Peru, Mesoamerican, Yellow River Valley China, Indus River Valley, and Mesopotamia. Secondary state development occurred in states that developed from contact with already existing states. Primary state development occurred in areas with environmental circumscription.
Example #1: The mountainous river valleys of Peru were severely environmentally circumscribed. More intensive terrace cultivation under one large state was the result.
Example #2: Amazonian Indians could always retreat into deeper forest, whereas Native Americans could not.
Carneiro's theory has been criticized by the Dutch "early state school" emerging in the 1970s around cultural anthropologist Henri J.M. Claessen, on the ground that considerable contrary evidence can be found to Carneiro's theory. For example, the formation of some early states in East Africa, Sri Lanka and Polynesia do not easily fit with Carneiro's model. Hence Claessen's school developed a "complex interaction model" to explain early state formation, in which factors such as ecology, social and demographic structure, economic conditions, conflicts and ideology become aligned in ways which favour state organisation.