Many studies of state formation assume a simple hierarchical or pyramidal structure to power. Etruscan settlement analysis appears to point to a highly centralized hierarchical structure, where one city dominated its political territory. However, the internal dynamics of each city-state do not appear to have been so clearly hierarchical, but heterarchical in structure, composed of a heterarchy of dynamically competing descent groups vividly materialized in the cemeteries of the individual cities.
See also STATE FORMATION.
Historical Dictionary of the Etruscans. Simon K. F. Stoddart.