Introduction

Teotihuacán, one of the two largest urban centers in the pre-Hispanic New World, lies a short distance northeast of Mexico City. At its height, about a.d. 200–600, it had a population of 150,000 and controlled much of the central Mexico region (Bernal 1966; Millon 1973). At that time it must have been importing enormous quantities of raw materials, both to supply its own huge population and to fuel the widespread trade network that it dominated. This raises a number of questions about the mechanisms involved in the exploitation and transportation of these resources. It is important to determine the role played by the Teotihuacán state in procurement, the scope and stability of the networks that were established, and the effects of these networks on the political and economic structures of both Teotihuacán and the source regions.

Certain problematic aspects of the notion of ideology as commonly constructed, and as applied to material culture and historical processes are discussed. The notions of discourse and prestige are introduced as means towards the resolution of these problems. It is argued that certain aspects of the archaeology of Wessex c. 2200–1400 be are best interpreted by means of a notion of competing and dynamic prestige systems. Many aspects of the radical alterations in the content and patterning of the archaeological record noted by prehistorians may be understood by positing a decisive and radical alteration in the systems of prestige and ritual practiced in Wessex. Although some criticisms are made of other interpretations of the Wessex material, the intention of this chapter is rather to supplement these by highlighting aspects of the record neglected in other accounts but of crucial importance in understanding much of the archaeological record.

Theoretical introduction

As archaeologists we are necessarily concerned with the symbolic dimension of social practices. The significance of ceramic design, burial practices, or refuse deposition, for example, lies in their symbolic and semantic character within a particular social and historical formation. Symbols and systems of symbols, as major elements in social action, may be seen as functioning in various ways. Bourdieu (1979), for instance, argues that a symbolic system can be seen as having three functions: as a means of communication, as an instrument for the knowledge and construction of the objective world, and as instrument of domination by establishing and legitimating, through its ideological effect, the dominant culture and concealing that culture's methods of division.

Ideology, power and long-term social change

The introduction attempted to provide a background to the ideas and approaches that have been used in this volume. In this conclusion we wish to point out some of the ways in which the application of these approaches appears to present promising possibilities for the future, and also to deal more explicitly with the relationship between them and the study of prehistoric materials. The focus of this volume has been on diachronic analysis. Only the paper by Welbourn is synchronically conceived. Of the other papers in Part two, the periods under study, roughly half a century for Leone, and a century for Miller, may seem relatively short but these are periods of rapid and considerable change. The case studies of Part three are based on periods of around one millennium. This is a particular feature of archaeological synthesis and indeed one millennium is not an unduly long period by the standards of the discipline. Such a scope necessitates consideration of factors not generally encountered in other areas of the social sciences.

For many archaeologists it has been precisely this long time-span that has been used to legitimate analyses founded on relatively mechanical and deterministic perspectives. The case studies presented here indicate that this need not be an inevitable result of archaeological analyses. Throughout the volume there is an emphasis on change as being predicated on a consideration of social factors inextricably linked with the form and nature of social totalities postulated for the segment of the past under consideration.

This chapter illustrates how the critique of ideology can be used for the study of material objects by reference to the familiar contemporary built environment. An outline is given of the Frankfurt School's model of the relationship between science and technology, and ideological control. It is then shown how modernist architecture fulfils the expectations derived from the model. Modernism cannot, however, be understood in isolation, but only in relation to other major traditions to which it is opposed. In Britain an important alternative tradition is the suburban semi-detached house. By examining the contrary values and ideals represented in these two traditions, the complex ideological underpinnings of the apparent meanings of the constructed world are revealed. One class of people are shown not only to objectify their interests in their own housing but to construct that which objectifies the values to which they are opposed, in such a manner, that they are able to make the consumers of these images appear as though they were the producers. Finally a parallel is drawn between the nature of authority revealed in this analysis and that of the four archaeological examples developed in the following chapters.

Introduction

This chapter is intended as a bridge between Chapter 1 in which an attempt is made to build a working model of ideology, and the archaeological uses made of that concept in the third section of this volume. It is devised on the lines of an old archaeological adage: when in doubt start from the best known and then work towards the least known.

This volume is first shown to form part of a larger dialogue arising from some critiques of the dominant models in archaeological theory. In particular, it is part of an attempt to credit people and society in prehistory and material culture studies with the same abilities as we credit ourselves, rather than reducing them to the passive recipients of external forces. Two general discussions then follow, a summary is given of some approaches to the concept of power, and in particular a description and critique of Foucault's recent work on this topic is used as the basis for developing a working model of power. A model for the critique of ideology is developed through the examination of three examples. Firstly Marx's critique of the bourgeois conception of the political economy, secondly Marx's own labour theory of value, and thirdly the implications of three recent critiques of Marx's work. From these are derived some general characteristics of a working model for the critique of ideology, which differs in a number of respects from the original example of Marx's writings.

A problem in archaeology has always been that its method has provided the dominant metaphor for its interpretation. Before all else, archaeology has been about discovery. It is as quest and search that archaeology first commanded and now continues to fascinate its wide audience. This is encapsulated in the image of the archaeologist finally clearing a way through the last of the jungle to reveal the ancient ruined city, or burrowing through placid fields and orchards to uncover the unsuspected evidence of antiquity.

The process by which children come to accept the gender-specific associations of everyday objects are considered. The eight basic forms of the Endo ceramic assemblage are described, as used in everyday and in ceremonial contexts. The central role played by some pots in the wedding ceremonies reveal certain associations that may account for the pattern of decorative treatments of the assemblage. Pottery serves both to separate but also to mediate between the spheres of activity and interpretation represented by the two genders. This analysis is reinforced by a consideration of the use of broken pots and raw clay. The pottery forms can thus be related to the assimilation and ritual legitimation of the social order, and in particular, of male dominance. However, both the muted and practical power of women must be considered.

Introduction

The dominant theme of this book is to investigate the kinds of relationships which exist between ideology, representations of power and material culture. In this chapter these relationships will be illustrated by means of a specific case study concerned with the use of pottery by a predominantly agricultural group in Kenya. As will be demonstrated one of the main themes of this study is the suitability of the theoretical approaches advocated (outlined in Chapter 1) to a society divided not by social classes but in terms of sex and age, factors which while being presented in a specific social form, are nevertheless overtly given a biological justification.

This volume arises out of a symposium held at the third Theoretical Archaeology Group conference, Reading, U.K. in December 1981. Most of the papers are, however, either extensively revised or use quite different examples from the original presentations. All but one of the contributors to this volume also wrote papers for an earlier publication in this series, Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Hodder, Ed. 1982). The ideas that form the focus of this volume were one of a number to be tentatively explored there.

A consideration of ideology and power means that we are no longer able simply to ‘read off’ the nature of past societies from material evidence. Instead the archaeological record must be understood as actively mediated and manipulated as part of the social strategies of the individuals and groups that constituted a past society. Material culture can be used to express interests and ideas which may very well be contradictory. In order to understand ideology and power successfully a historical, particularist and contextual approach to the evidence is fundamental. This allows us to tackle both the variability and the specificity of archaeological data and contemporary material culture. It makes the past irreducibly the creation of sentient social actors and allows us to come both to a better understanding of it and of ourselves.

We recognise that this is only one of a number of attempts, at present being conducted, which seek to reorientate the nature of archaeological theory and practice.

A summary of the main approaches to the study of megaliths reveals how recent processual work that relates them to general principles fails to deal with the specificity of their variability, and their particular historical context. A systematic comparison between central and western European megaliths and central European long-houses in the 5th and 4th millennia reveals eight points of similarity. It is suggested that the tombs represent a transformation of the houses. This may be understood in relation to a transformation in the productive base and social organisation of the period. The specific form of the houses is related to the marking out and naturalisation of the position of women, and the importance of lineages at a time when labour was the key factor in the productive system. When the scarcity of land becomes predominant over the scarcity of labour, the emphasis changes from the domestic context of the home to the mediating properties of the supernatural expressed in the tombs, for control over the lineage. The evidence for Central and Atlantic Europe is compared.

The history of research on the megalithic monuments of western Europe provides a clear illustration of the deleterious effects of the split between historical and processual approaches in archaeology. In this paper, some of these effects will be illustrated, but then, using essentially the same material, an alternative approach will be examined. A perspective that treats the evidence as ideologically informed representations can resolve the previous dichotomies and indicate the potential in the study of prehistoric social relations.

A comparison of the ritual and profane aspects of Germanic society in Jutland, Denmark, from 500 BC to AD 600, as interpreted from funerary, votive and settlement contexts, highlights the accumulation of worldly power through the sacrifice of precious goods to the supernatural. The whole period was one of increasing wealth-destruction which halted abruptly in the seventh century AD. Agricultural production expanded until the fifth century when there occurred an economic crisis which continued into the sixth century. Within this long-term cycle of expansion and decline were three smaller cycles. In the first (500–50 BC) increasing quantities of prestigious items were sacrificed as votive offerings. At the end of the cycle they were placed in graves and no longer in votive contexts, possibly representing a transition in spiritual allegiance from deities of the bogs, lakes and other natural features, to ancestral powers. At the same time there were important changes in the privatization of agricultural property. In the second cycle (50 BC–AD 200) there was a cumulative increase in wealth-items as grave goods, accompanying a gradual elaboration and reworking of ritualized roles and categories. After a period of social unrest in the third century there was another increase in the removal of gold and silver from circulation (either in a single ‘horizon’ or gradually) between AD 400 and 600. Agricultural expansion and technological innovations within each cycle accompanied progressively unequal social relations.

This chapter focuses on the manner in which ideologically informed representations serve to naturalise the arbitrary nature of the social order. The construction of an eighteenth-century garden is shown to employ a number of means towards this aim. Through the use of classical quotations and the development of a concept of precedence with juridical associations, the garden presents a particular rationalisation of time, which also denies its own transient nature. Its geometry and optics exemplified in its use of perspective, serve towards a controlled rationalisation of space. Overall the garden not only acts as representation but also works as an instrument for the close experimental observation and control of nature. The garden and the segmented and ordered form of Georgian architecture can be related to the contradictions of a society proclaiming freedom and independence but maintaining a system of slavery. The deliberately planned wilderness garden exemplifies such contradictions.

The eighteenth century in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland is today the subject of intensive, rigorous, and multidisciplinary research. There are few areas in the United States where there is more work done by creative people using materials from the past. Historians, architectural historians, folklorists, and historical archaeologists are all producing studies which offer the first new ideas on Chesapeake society since the turn of the century and which are giving the area an historical importance rivalling that long claimed for New England. The Chesapeake is being endowed with a deeper historical identity.

Some aspects of the debate over the primary contention that the world is organised by people into sets of categories are introduced. The material world is produced as a series of ordered relationships using principles such as hierarchy and contrast. There has been considerable work in philosophy, psychology, linguistics and social anthropology on meaning and categorisation and the limitations and value to archaeology of studies in these different disciplines are assessed. For example, the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss, generative or transformational grammars and componential analysis are considered. The problem associated with these approaches concerns the relationship between form or structure and the social context in which it is generated. Studies which link categorisation to pragmatics are described, and there is a suggestion that we deal with the ‘fuzziness’ of categories directly, rather than treating categories as discrete groups.

Introduction

This paper is a discussion of the proposition that ‘material culture sets reflect the organisational principles of human categorisation processes, and that it is through the understanding of such processes that we may best be able to interpret changes in material culture sets over time’. ‘Material culture sets’ refers to pottery, field systems, temple architecture or indeed anything in the archaeological record that we can interpret as being the result of human productive processes. The term ‘sets’ means that we are not concerned with individual forms but always with series of forms that share attributes common to the series as a whole, while a further group of attributes discriminate between the members of the series and give them definition or ‘meaning’.