Чийфдъмът като феномен. I. Същност и място в анализа на държавообразувателните процеси. Въведение в проблематиката
Chiefdom as a Phenomenon. I. Nature and Role in the Analysis of the State Formation Processes. Introduction to the Problems

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, an introductory hictoriographic study on the term chiefdom is offered, which without doubt is necessary in Bulgarian historical scholarship. Topicality of the problem is predetermined by the central place that this term and the socio-political reality, which it denominates, occupy in the terminological and theoretical apparatus through which the epoch of the so-called Politogenesis – i.e. the time of starting and development of State Formation processes, which led to the decline of the tribal potestary-political system and its replacement by a State potestary political system – is described in historical studies. In the first place, a brief analysis of the history of the formation and development of the term is presented. In connection with this, its gradual establishment in the analytic apparatus of the study of the Epoch of Prymary (Initial) and Secondary Politogenesis in all the regions of the world is emphasized, i.e. its gradual constitution as an universal historical term. In this respect is outlined the process of adoption of a term that has been born in the system of Political Anthropology (in Russian and Bulgarian scientific tradition known also as Potestary Political ethnography), in the system of the analysis of historical studies of Antiquity and the Middle Ages as well as of the analysis of the Prehistoric Ages. The second group of problems on the state of investigation of which an attempt to throw light is made, are the problems connected with the differentiation of the term chiefdom into separate specific historical, typological and stadial versions. It is underlined that in spite of the sharp debatability of some of these problems their discussion all the same transforms into a basis for an inside periodization of the epoch of politogenesis. In the third place, it is emphasized on the necessity to clarify some problems connected to the character of the potestary and political system of the so-called chiefdom. In this respect as a fundamental problem is indicated mostly therole in this system of the chieftains from the epoch of politogenesis – this eponymous for the term institution – thus outlining one of the possible directions of future studies, and, if possible, the circle of problems, which eventually will be analyzed in the next part of the present study.

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