PL
The article constitutes an attempt to collect and specify the notions referring to various forms of social organization during the early-state period that function both in the historical and archaeological Polish contemporary literature. The authoress assumes that nowadays the clashing of two, theoretical and terminological, traditions can be observed in the scientific literature. These are: the notions like: tribe, war democracy (tribal state), state, and the ius ducale system in the Polish tradition, and the terms like chiefdom, segmentary society, early state in the Anglo-Saxon one. The existence of this multiplicity of notions is not harmful, and such a large number of terminological traditions enriches the discipline of study significantly. However, awareness of the origins of these applied terms is of great importance.