"Sovereignty without the state"
in Chavín, there is "nothing" that "seems concerned with secular government at all. There are no obvious military fortifications or administrative quarters."
the eighteenth-century Natchez, by contrast, have an "undisputed case of divine kingship," but "they had a minimal bureaucracy and nothing like a competitive political field. As far as we know it has never occurred to anyone to refer to this arrangement as a 'state'" (391)
"sovereignty without the state" (396)
see also various periods in Egypt: "What preceded the First Dynasty [was a] surfeit of tiny kingdoms and miniature courts," with kings who "gave every sign of making grandiose, absolute, cosmological claims; but little sign of maintaining administrative or military control over their respective territories"