Valley state

A paddy field in Zomia.

The Valley state (Gaullican: Etat vallois), also referred to in some literature as the Paddy state (Gaullican: Etat riziere), is a central concept in the social and cultural anthropology of Southern Coius. It is a catch-all term which designates the lowland polities of the region which largely depended on paddy-rice agriculture. Valley states are compared with hill tribes, comparitively less formally organised societies in the South Coian Massif, though as anthropologists such as Jaques Legalle have noted such divides are often arbitrary and do not take into account the complex relationships between these two people groupings which inhabit the region.

Thanks to the intensity of paddy rice cultivation and its regular yields, settlements were able to grow to larger sizes than the hill settlements which were primarily based on slash-and-burn agriculture of tubers and root vegetables. This lent them greater military might, but also led to increased social stratification as power structures emerged to organise the possession of land. The term has also gained a degree of currency, though smaller, in referring to other premodern societies in Coius such as in Bahia with Sares, especially in the Central Green Belt.