Bands, clans, tribes and confederacies

Lesson 1 of 5 in "How societies are built", about 6 minutes

Think of the groups you belong to: a household, a wider family, a neighbourhood, a town, a country. Each does a different job. Indigenous and tribal societies are built the same way, from circles of belonging that sit inside one another. The names scholars give to these circles are band, lineage, clan, tribe and confederacy.

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1. Household. Start small. A household is the family that eats from one hearth. Among the Hadza of Tanzania it may be a couple, their children and a grandparent sharing one shelter.
2. Band or village. Several households live together as a band or a village. A foraging band may hold 20 to 50 people. A farming village may hold several hundred. This is where daily life happens.
3. Lineage. Kinship cuts across where people live. A lineage is a set of relatives who can name each link back to a shared ancestor, usually four to six generations ago.
4. Clan. Several lineages form a clan. Members believe they share one founding ancestor, even when nobody can name every link. Clan members often may not marry each other.
5. Tribe. Clans and villages together form a tribe: a named group with its own territory, customs and leaders. Many groups prefer the words people, nation or community instead.
6. Confederacy. Some tribes join a lasting alliance. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy in North America united five nations, later six, under one council while each nation kept its own affairs.
7. People or nation. The widest circle is the people or nation. Not every people has every level, and none of these levels is more advanced than another. They are different ways to organise.

The band

A band is a small group of families who live and move together, usually between 20 and 50 people. It is the typical unit among peoples who live by hunting and gathering. Membership is loose. A family can leave to join relatives in another band after a quarrel or when food runs short. Leaders persuade and have no power to command. Decisions are made by talking.

The lineage and the clan

A lineage is a group of relatives who can trace each step back to a known ancestor. A clan is larger: its members believe they share a founding ancestor but cannot list every link. Clans are about identity, not address. Members of one clan may be scattered across many villages, yet they owe each other hospitality and help, and usually may not marry one another.

The tribe or people

Several clans and many villages together make up a tribe or people: a group with a common name, language, territory and customs. Some have a single chief or council. Others have no central authority at all. The Nuer of South Sudan were described in the 1930s as a society of several hundred thousand people held together by lineages, without any ruler.

Among Māori in New Zealand the levels have their own names. The whānau is the extended family. Several whānau form a hapū, a group of kin that traditionally held land and acted together. Several hapū form an iwi, often translated as tribe or nation. Each iwi traces itself back to an ancestor and, further back, to one of the voyaging canoes that reached the islands.

The confederacy

A confederacy is a lasting alliance of separate peoples. The best-known example is the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in north-eastern North America. It joined five nations, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca, under a shared constitution known as the Great Law of Peace. The Tuscarora joined in the early eighteenth century. Each nation kept its own council, and common matters went to a Grand Council.

• The Blackfoot Confederacy of the northern plains unites the Siksika, Kainai and Piikani.
• The Wabanaki Confederacy links peoples of what is now Maine and eastern Canada.
• Among the Maasai of East Africa, the people divide into territorial sections, each with its own name and grazing lands.
• Naga villages in north-east India were traditionally self-governing, with clans as the main units inside each village.

A warning about ladders

In the 1960s some anthropologists sorted all societies into four types: band, tribe, chiefdom and state. The scheme is still taught, because it gives handy words for scale. It has also been heavily criticised. Real societies do not fit the boxes neatly. Many shift between forms with the seasons or over the years, and people have at times chosen to move away from central rule.

Above all, the types are not rungs on a ladder of worth. A band is not a failed state. A small society without rulers has solved the problems of living together in its own way, often with more equality and less violence within the group than larger societies manage. Use the words as descriptions of size and structure, and nothing more.

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