Most archaeologists would probably argue that the energetics of hunting and gathering economies simply cannot support large.-scale polities. However, this does not explain why small-scale ones do not often develop. It may also be that there is something about the structure of hunter-gatherer economies or social organization that prevents the widespread development of extra-household political institutions. Tringham (2000) has recently made the intriguing suggestion that household production itself limited political development in Bronze Age Europe, preventing the urbanization and state development that occurred in nearby Southwest Asia. The basic argument of this paper is that these questions, and questions developed below, cannot really be addressed until we gain a much better understanding of hunter-gatherer household economies.