Until quite recently, cultural evolution has commonly been regarded as the permanent teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy, crowned by state formation. However, recent research, particularly those based upon the principle of heterarchy - "...the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways" (Crumley 1995: 3) changes the usual picture dramatically. The opposite of heterarchy, then, would be a condition in society in which relationships in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organizational principle may be called "homoarchy". Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal лideal principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural (including political) organization and its transformations. There are no universal evolutionary stages - band, tribe, chiefdom, state or otherwise - inasmuch as cultures so characterized could...