ARC 1010 - Complexity and power in prehistory

• Authority & leadership: not always through coercive power, don't compel people with physical force
• ‘Prestige:’ reputation, honour, wealth and the ability to mobilise the support of followers through chain of obligations
• This process often involves some form of ‘valuables’

• Valuables: marks of social status that define an individual’s political and economic rights in a society.
• Embody different forms of value
• Access to certain goods deemed valuable for various reasons may enable an individual or group to acquire prestige and thus legitimise their claim to political power
• Controlling the distribution of valuables can help chiefs to mobilise supporters. 
• Highlights social stratification

• Personal power and prestige can be expressed through articles worn on the body, carried, displayed near an individual of importance, or displayed in a place of importance in the home > carries milieu of social meaning
• These may include emblems, insignia, or jewellery; objects made from rare and precious materials; labour-intensive works of art; and things of beauty, refinement, elegance, and grace.
• Prestige objects augment a person physically and metaphorically (make them ‘larger than life’)
• Worldly possessions signal wealth and power. Through the ownership of such objects, a person symbolically becomes more than themselves
• Labour invested to acquire no only physical but labour of knowledge (social, technical), therefore the geographical/financial/competitive difficulty of acquisition shows your prestige
• Some materials better for holding social value with more aspects being more culturally relative

• Political leadership needs artefacts to demonstrate status
• E.g. Queen embodies aspects of the nation considered long-lasting
• Process of her becoming Queen needs anointing and having a crown (encapsulates history of the culture)
• Material object allows power to be reproduced in time

• Artefacts made to be displayed or worn during special occasions: burials, ceremonies, celebrations,
• Artefacts that could have had a practical purpose but weren’t really used: metal axes, shields, etc.
• Artefacts that were manufactured to have a practical use but later have a ‘second life’ as ‘special’ items: e.g. ordinary pots that go into a grave when the user dies
• Artefacts made with complex techniques, requiring high skills
• Artefacts made with materials that were exotic, rare, or that were specially valued (jade, obsidian, gold, feathers)
• Artefacts or objects that have no ‘evident’ labour investment, but my have been considered as having magical protective properties (apotropaic)

• Human societies value materials in different ways, e.g. gold was value differently by native societies and Spanish conquistadors
• Still, gold seems to have been generally highly appreciated
• Renfrew’s criteria for ‘prime value’ of gold:
  • Gold was used for personal adornment over key parts of the body: e.g. Varna phallocarps (gold covering the phallus demonstrating personal (physical) power and the material shows power)
  • Gold was a regular component of symbols of power
  • Certain artefacts were made to appear as though made from gold (stretched for maximum effect with minimum use)
  • Gold was used sparingly (relative to other materials, expresses/augments and is fairly rare and holds a lot of connotations)
  • Gold is reflective, shiny, untarnishable and durable
• Lots of examples of gold artefacts are related to power, where objects are treated as persons themselves

• 4600-4200 BCE
• Famous and very big
• Lots of gold artefacts as displays of individual power/prestige:
  • jewellery
  • axes
  • figures
• Some graves with gold but no remains, just an artefact burial 
• Possibly a display of individual prestige as a donation (some think it's the gold of one of the kings buried there)

• Moche culture, 100-700 CE
• Close to royal tomb
• Gold, shells, people burned with the Lord, offerings of food, artefacts, etc. 
• Pyramid structure > Moche ^ then Lords on levels

• Ascribed status: status from attributes over which we have no control i.e. age, gender, race; high status acquired through heredity
• Achieved status: status as a result of personal advancement and education; high status achieved within a broadly egalitarian society

How do we distinguish these? - Peebles and Kus: vertical differentiation

• material would be distributed in a pyramidal model i.e. few at top of social stratum, many at the bottom
• amount of energy expended in funerary rituals must also be taken into account, how much effort went into someone's burial (sometimes not distinguishable as how can we assess which goods were deposited as a representation of status and whch were from donations by mourners, e.g. child with lots of things, inherited status from parents who achieved it)
• Moundville – big sample

• Since the 19th Century, approaches to ancient societies have sought to classify them according to their perceived ‘level of evolution’, from more ‘simple/primitive’ to more ‘complex/developed’ (when the West was seen as paramount) Social Darwininism
• ‘Increasing cultural complexity’ was one of the ‘measures’ to organise these typologies of societies

• Cultural complexity: The degree to which a society is internally differentiated and the interrelationships among the parts
  • Vertically: ranking positions, status, classes
  • Horizontally: division of labour (specialists), age & gender groups, political factions, kin groups, corporate groups
• Morris: A measure of the scale (size, reach, numbers) of practices (e.g. settlement, energy capture, monument building, inequality, heterogeneity, communication) characterizing societies 
• Measure of sum-components and can compare without making value judgements about development
• Social and cultural complexity are often interchangeably

• Do dimensions of variation (eg level of hierarchy) occur in the same manner and change at the same time?
• For instance: Greek city states carved out empires, built temples and palaces, had a complex division of labour, and practised slavery
• But they were internally fairly egalitarian, poor men participated in decision-making and blocked strong state institutions
• (Morris, 2012, 2000)

• What are the ‘movers’ of cultural change? 
  • Environmental pressure?
  • Demographics?
  • Cultural influence/difussion/migration?
  • Exchange & trade?
  • Technological innovation?
• Traditionally people emphasise 1 prime mover/another but all can be combined, >1 variable 
• Why has cultural complexity increased over the last 50,000 years?
• Though very small and not internally divided, overall human societies increased in complexity, but how do we explore this?
• Is this a valid question? Have all human societies followed the same pathway?

• 19th Century social evolutionism e.g., Herbert Spencer, Lewis Morgan, Edward Burnett Tylor
• Expanding economic/democratic/cultural thought, many differences and explained we need to bring people to our level > contrast is how 19th century scholarship developed to classify societies
• Some who lived in contemporary societies had lived in less developed societies
• Principles and postulates
  • Directional trajectory: All societies through the same stages and in the same sequence
  • Change toward increasing “human fulfilment”
  • Gradualism
  • Universality
  • Material determinism
  • Causal reductionism
  • Contemporary ancestors or “Living fossils”
• Different from Darwinian evolutionism, but influenced by it in various degrees

• Rebirth of evolutionism, Marxist scholars wanting to understand human societies as we encounter them today
• Lesley White, Julian Steward; (1960s) Elman Service, Marshall Sahlins, Morton Fried
  • The ‘contemporary ancestors’
  • Cross-cultural comparison
  • Universal laws of change
• Material conditions of existence were seen as largely determinant, but disagreement on whether social/political/ritual aspects could be seen as less relevant
• A very approach influential in the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s, but heavily criticised and revised since the 90’s
• Present examples of how pre-historical societies may have been
• Emphasised material conditions of existence

• Popular in the 60s
• No judgements but understand increasing cultural-complexity with increasing technological forces and environment
• How complex a society was internally moved them up the model ladder
• Contemporary ancestors (Yoffee) = contemporary example of BTCS model showing snapshots of human evolution

• A small group of related people, who are primarily organized through family bonds.
• Foraging typifies the subsistence technology.
• A respected and older person may be looked to for leadership, but the person has no formalized authority
• 30-100 people, nomadic
• Discover how complex these societies are even without an undifferentiated social structure

• A group that centres around kinship units and common-interest groups that cross-cut kindred boundaries (pan-tribal sodalities).
• Larger population, with seasonal gatherings
• Horticulture typifies the subsistence technology; hunting & gathering in high productivity areas
• People who attain prestige according to cultural standards may be seen as leaders.
• The big-man institution: leadership is negotiated on the basis of reciprocal generosity; it is not inherited. Leadership based on personal charisma or skill

• One Big Man will challenge another to a Moka exchange to take place on a certain date.
• Both men must then assemble a massive gift to present to the other in the presence of their tribes (hundreds of pigs, as well as food, cash, handicrafts, and shells from the coast).
• The man who gives the greater gift wins Moka, or dignity. 
• The man who gives the lesser gift is placed in debt to the other, and must repay the debt through an even more fabulous gift
• Big Men are not rich in possessions, but they are in terms of social capital
• They leverage their connections in order to prepare their offerings - individual leadership but a communal enterprise

• Some say don't exist, but 1/typologies, have historically changed to become chiefdoms
• Increased population, settled, full scale agriculture and herding economies.
• Permanent central coordinating agency
• Hereditary office (raising status of lineage).
• The chief co-ordinates religious activities, deploys public labour, and redistributes goods
• Specialization in production.
• Substantial, large scale exchange and trade.
• Pervasive inequality between peoples and groups, a well-defined hierarchy.
• Prestige objects not traded up/down but across, and other material culture with poorer people
• Political organisation inherited within kinship lines > ranked groups not classes but exclusive ranks with minimal social mobility 

• Ranked society
• Redistribution organised by a chief
• Greater population density
• Increase of total number in society
• Increase of size of residence group
• Greater productivity
• Defined territory or border
• Centres & monumental building
• Regular ceremonies
• Rise of priesthood
• Distinctive attire to show rank
• Economic specialisation
• External war

• One big discussion: is the stone age a chiefdom or not?
• Stonehenge only under central authority with a ritual specialist BUT though effort was massive we know it was communally organise
• No evidence of a central authority, possible it was a big public work without central authority with control of resources
• In heartland there was a big transformation of landscape (raised field agriculture)
• Didn't need authority, can tranform public spaces and infrastructure to increase production without central authority/government BUT in combination with something else, possibly a chiefdom

• Does authority rise for “managerial reasons”?
• To administer resources and manage environmental and cultural instability and uncertainty?
• Tim Earle (1987): A study of Hawaiian chiefdoms that showed that chiefs emerged because individuals seek to enhance their power and prestige in a competitive system
• Their backing with community helps to make them more prestigious and powerful
• Beneficial redistribution or administration is not the main goal of the chief 

• Potlatches are feasts held between various villages among native American communities of the N Pacific coast of North America, to mark significant events in the community
• Births, memorials, marriages, recognition of hereditary chief titles, to induct new members into various societies and the affirmation of ancestral names.
• Traditional potlatches would start with a hereditary chief gathering his clan together to present its members with a massive gift of food, blankets, furs, weapons, canoes, and crafts. 
• The gifts were presented at the end of an elaborate festival involving speeches, songs, and spirit dances that could sometimes last for days.
• The people also bartered and exchanged goods, but the main goal of the feast was to generate new links and legitimise the chief’s authority.
• In the Potlatch, the greater the gift, the more social capital it produced.

• Copper was an exotic item, with supernatural powers
• A host who had received coppers from his guests at their potlatches was compelled to present them with a greater value of coppers than he had previously received at their next potlatch.
• The wealthiest chiefs smashed coppers or throw them into the sea to demonstrate their superiority and strength.
• A leader who could not afford to make these presents or did not possess coppers could not hold a successful potlatch to celebrate important events and would consequently be considered a man of little importance among his peers 
• Copper had extreme intrinsic value but many gifts may not have survived

• Iron Age, 500 BCE
• Burial chambers within one mound
• Evidence of stone walling was found
• Believed to be a ceremonial entrance to burial chamber
• Chamber very large – made from oak timbers
• Near mound two pits – contained workshop debris from manufacture of grave goods
• Large decorated bronze couch
• Supported by figurines – female dancers – with metal wheels
• Back is decorated with scenes of warriors and four wheeled wagons
• Four wheeled wagon found within grave – chariot burial

• Traces of textiles and animal hairs found on seat of couch
• Either have had padded upholstery or covered by cushions, blankets or skins
• Dead man had gold decorated shoes, gold neck ring and gold bracelets on right arm
  • Also had gold broach, gold decorated belt, gold dagger sheath and iron dagger with a gold hilt
  • Wore conical wooden hat
  • Had wooden comb and iron razor placed by head
  • Nail cutter found on cloth pouch on his chest
  • Head was supported on cushion with aromatic herbs
• Great bronze cauldron decorated with lions – may have contained mead
• Nine decorated drinking horns
• On wagon there was a dinner service – three shallow bronze bowls and nine bronze dishes
• Chamber decorated with carpets and textiles on walls
• Man was embalmed before burial – body stored bc had lost hair before burial and chamber took time to prepare 
• Three other bodies found in mound: Grave 3 near centre only had simple grave goods (servant?), other graves secondary burials

• City= 3,000 to 10,000 people, 6,000 to 40,000 in the surrounding region
• Sudden change in settlement 1050 CE
• Hundreds of farmsteads supporting Cahokia; possible resettled communities hierarchically arranged where each level = level of authority
• Commoners tribute up chain and flow of redistribution down to people (food, tools, resources, gifts)
• Possible marriage alliances to support gift exchanges 
• Extensive trading networks
• A high level of organisation required.
• But aspects necessarily centralised? Possible just popular city with good trade and exchange economy but not actually chiefdom (see Pauketat 2007) 
• A huge chiefdom? Or a small state?
• Or just a city, in the middle of a widespread regional interaction space?
• Cahokia noted 4 stones, possible centralised organisation?

• How things different in the past?
• Contemporary society gives us iedas, but understanding examples through analogies with contemporary society is risky
• These societies have histories and similarities but many things may not have existed the same way in the past or be organised similarly 
• Typologies are a guide for societies, but everyone is critical of the model and the assumptions behind them
• Typologies only look at lowest common denominator and give us guidance but say nothing about individual historical trajectories of that specific society
• Problem = finding 1/aspects and inferring all of them, we have to be critical 

• The “continuum” model: societies do not fit neatly into these categories (Feinmann and Neitzel 1984)
• Post-processual and Marxist critiques: (e.g., Rowlands. 1986; Shanks and Tilley 1987, Yofee 2005)
• “lower to upper” model is ideological; supports racism and colonialism
• Cultural complexity emerges from internal contradictions
• There is no such thing as a ‘simple’ society: difference and internal conflict in every society
• Complex historical trajectories are fuelled by internal conflict and regional socio-political dynamics
• Sociocultural change is not holistic, it can happen in different ways
• Multiple and reversible pathways
• Bottom up approaches: humanity’s history is not only about institutions and those holding power

• For all the criticisms, we still have to answer how some small-scale human groups made the transition to largerscale, hierarchically more complex ones.
• We should work with typologies of patterned historical change: that a society may be at times more tribal, bandlike or chiefdom-like should not be problematic but expected.
• What matters is the shape and tempo of specific historical trajectories (see Fowles 2003).
• Work with more ambiguity and fluidity of societies, e.g. why Cahokia appeared and disappeared so suddenly 

• We need to take care not to impose our values and assume certain materials held the same value and prestige in past societies as our own
• Lots of artefacts don't survive so we can't assess the whole picture if there are pieces missing
• Beyond economic value, symbolic associations may be an equally important factor in the choice of raw material (e.g. jade in Mesoamerica, gold in the Americas)
• Maybe offerings from the living rather than the belongings of the deceased
• Maybe that the contents was the greatest value than the vessel it self e.g. beakers
• Other materials such as textiles, food or wood may have been placed in what appear as ‘poor’ graves, but these rarely survive
• We make assumptions about hierarchical societies but don't have all the facts