Elizabeth DeMarrais

Ideology, Materialization, and Power Strategies

Ideology, as part of culture, is an integral component of human interactions and the power strategies that configure sociopolitical systems. We argue that ideology is materialized, or given concrete form, in order to be a part of the human culture that is broadly shared by members of a society. This process of materialization makes it possible to control, manipulate, and extend ideology beyond the local group. Ideology becomes an important source of social power when it can be given material form and controlled by a dominant group. We illustrate this process using three archaeological case studies: Neolithic and Bronze Age chiefdoms of Denmark, the Moche states of northern Peru, and the Inka empire of the Andes.

Inka Rule in the Northern Calchaquí Valley, Argentina

Abstract Inka rule in the northern Calchaquí Valley in NW Argentina employed a varied strategy that drew the regions societies into the empire in the 15th century A.C. Surface survey, site mapping, and excavation, combined with review of historical documents, show that the Inkas applied measures designed to ensure security, intensify production of agropastoral and mineral resources, introduce state ideology, administer state activities, and establish cultural relations with compliant subjects. Because the Inkas tailored their approaches to the sociopolitical and natural circumstances of each region, imperial rule resulted in two different kinds of occupations: a discrete set of state installations in the north and a mixed, state-local occupation in the mid-valley.

Understanding Heterarchy: Crafting and Social Projects in Pre-Hispanic Northwest Argentina

Archaeological studies of specialized craft production in hierarchies often highlight the crucial roles of prestige goods in ancient political economies. Yet elaborate crafted items are also produced and circulated widely in heterarchically-ordered societies, where powerful elites are absent. In this latter case, attributing crafting to the agency of elites — or to the demands of political economy — is unconvincing. This article investigates the alternative cultural logic underlying crafting in heterarchies, seeking to understand both the contexts of crafting and the nature of the ‘social projects’ in which artisans were engaged. Expectations for archaeological signatures of craft activity are developed and applied to a case study, drawing upon recent excavations in northwest Argentina.

Making pacts and cooperative acts: the archaeology of coalition and consensus

Interest in the nature and dynamics of consensus, coalition-building, and collective action has increased dramatically in archaeology during recent years. In a volume edited almost 80 years ago, Margaret Mead (1937, 8) defined cooperation as ‘the act of working together to one end’, acknowledging the obvious fact that people working together achieve far more than isolated individuals. At the same time, her title, Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, emphasized contrasting modes of human interaction. Archaeologists have, understandably, placed great emphasis on understanding competition – for resources, for territory and for power – in the human past. This issue, focusing on the archaeology of coalition and consensus, reflects expanding interest in consensus, in its diverse manifestations, in the archaeological record. As outlined in more detail below, theoretical approaches are also diverse, encompassing archaeologies of lived experience and daily life (Overholtzer and Robin 2015; McGuire 2008; Robin 2013), practice theory and relational approaches (Hastorf 2010; Watts 2013; Pauketat 2013), as well as political economy perspectives (Dye 2008; Price and Feinman 2012b). Contributors to this issue seek to identify and interpret the archaeological correlates of coalition-building and consensus, to adapt and refine theoretical ideas and to investigate, through case studies, conditions that allowed ‘more corporate’ or consensus-based forms of interaction to take hold and persist in past societies.

Art as an affecting presence: infant funerary urns in pre-Hispanic northwest Argentina

Abstract This article asks how art makes society, investigating the ways art objects were used by past peoples to shape and to give expression to emotions. Archaeology reveals a rich diversity of images and objects used by people as part of processions, performances, dances, or feasts. Reflecting enormous variation, art evoked wide-ranging sensory experiences, some of them powerfully affecting, transformative, and lasting in their impacts. Employing Armstrongs notion of the ‘affecting presence’, the author considers how archaeologists might reconstruct past emotions. A case study involving decorated burial urns from northwest Argentina during the Regional Developments Period, AD 950–1430, is explored in detail to consider the figured world of infant burial and mourning.

Art makes society: an introductory visual essay

Abstract In this visual essay that serves as an introduction to the set of articles presented in this issue, we illustrate four ways that art makes society. We adopt a stance informed by recent perspectives on material culture, moving away from thinking about art purely in aesthetic terms, instead asking how art objects have significance in particular cultural and social contexts. Arguing that art is participatory as well as visually affecting, we first suggest that art creates sites of activity for shared interaction. Second, we discuss the varied ways that people use art to create and assert representational models for social relations. Third, we consider the varied roles of art as cultural capital, marking out members of society through shared forms of knowledge or access to art. Finally, we document the ways that art serves as a medium of exclusion and as a means for resisting authority or challenging power relations. We highlight the layered meanings inherent in many artworks.

Introduction: the archaeology of performance

Traces of past performances are abundant in the archaeological record. The events that captured and held the attention of audiences in the past continue to fascinate archaeologists. Performances had significance in political, social and cultural spheres of past societies, full of potential not only to transmit established meanings, but also, through time, to transform them. Excavating the remains of theatres, plazas, stages, masks and costumes, portable objects, as well as investigating a rich iconographic record (depicting past performances), researchers have sought to understand the significance of these dramatic – and often costly – undertakings. Beyond the spectacles of ancient states, the rituals and other face-to-face interactions that characterized smaller-scale societies are also amenable to analysis from a ‘performance’ perspective. The articles in this issue explore the archaeology of performance, broadly defined. Specific aims are 1) to refine existing frameworks for thinking about performance; 2) to consider the relevance of new theoretical directions; and 3) to contribute original case studies that document the diversity of this genre of action in past societies.

Animacy, abstraction, and affect in the Andean past: Toward a relational approach to art

ion In art, abstraction involves, simply, the absence of figuration or naturalistic depictions, or it can entail the elimination of detail or the simplification of form (Pasztory (1990/1991, 114), perhaps as a means to emphasize interconnections among the elements that remain. Alternatively, abstraction may highlight an underlying pattern. In Western settings, modern conceptual art demands greater effort from its audiences than does a traditional landscape, seascape or still-life painting (Pasztory 2005, 139), and some Andean art requires similar effort, particularly for those unfamiliar with its conventions. In this section, I draw attention to abstraction in Andean art that suggests makers’ efforts to express a concept, to express a relationship, or to convey a sense of order. The abstraction seen in Inka art suggests a fascination with geometry, dimensionality and mathematics (Urton 1997). Similarly, standardization of motifs woven into Wari tunics involved repetition with modification in orientations, scale and colour combinations. Additionally, the compression of motifs across the width of some Wari tunics accommodated the shape of the wearer’s body, to maintain the (visual) integrity of geometric patterns while the tunic was being worn. Wari weavers applied rule-governed distortions to motifs, systematically compressing stylized figures (birds and camelids (or deer)), as described recently by Bergh (2012; see also Sawyer 1982). As the most highly visible and elaborate portable objects produced by Wari artisans, Bergh (2012, 188) further surmises that when Wari elites wore tunics, they associated themselves with supernatural beings and their numerous attendants. The ordering and layout of the designs may also have signalled rank, while ‘insistent dualism’ (2012, 189) seen in the pairing of figures drew attention to principles of reciprocity or to the capacity of the wearer to reconcile conflicting forces or tensions, both ‘cosmic and human ... The tunics’ color patterns, which so strongly emphasize the even, balanced distribution of paired