SERVICE, ELMAN ROGERS

born May 18, 1915, Tecumseh, Mich., U.S. died Nov. 14, 1996, Santa Barbara, Calif. American anthropological theorist and formulator of the nomenclature now in standard use to categorize primitive societies as bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Although widely accepted, the system was abandoned by Service himself because his subsequent research made him question the accuracy of the terminology, especially in the case of tribe. His examination of cultural evolution in Paraguay and his studies of cultures elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean led to a series of books on social systems and the rise of the state. Service received his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1950). He served on the anthropology faculty there (194953), as well as at the University of Michigan (195369) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (196985). He was the author of A Profile of Primitive Culture (1958; rev. ed. published as Profiles in Ethnology, 1963) and coeditor, with Marshall D. Sahlins, of Evolution and Culture (1960). Other works include Primitive Social Organization (1962), The Hunters (1966), Cultural Evolutionism (1971), Origins of the State and Civilization (1975), and A Century of Controversy: Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960 (1985).