As our perspective on ancient political institutions has shifted from the idea that they were unitary well-integrated systems to the view that they incorporated multiple levels of competing and conflicting claims to power, from an emphasis on the economic foundations of power to a focus on ideological means of establishing power and authority, from an etic and large-scale view of societal patterns to a more emic and micro-scale view of individual action within households, genders, communities, or factions, political ritual became the focus of attention as the locus for producing, reproducing, and transforming power. Power came to be seen as embodied, effected, and reproduced in political rituals that were mostly performed in institutions, from the household all the way up to the state government. Although these institutions cannot be observed directly by archaeologists, they “often materialize in specific and recurring ways” in particular physical arenas or landscapes, using specific material equipment, facilities and ritual activities (Kristiansen 2001, 86; DeMarrais, Castillo, and Earle 1996, 2004; Emerson 1997; Smith 2003). Earle (2001) describes institutions as those “that integrate more people in increasingly differentiated ways, but especially they determine rights and compensations within increasingly complex economies” (106).
According to DeMarrais, Castillo, and Earle (1996; Earle 2001), institutions are embodied and materialized through different physical media: built landscapes, writing (including legal contracts), symbolic objects, and ceremonies (or political rituals).6 For many archaeologists, landscapes are seen as most effective for forming institutions and materializing power: “Construction of the cultural landscape is a means to build large human institutions in the processes of social evolution” (Earle 2001, 107). The built landscape includes not only settlements from small to large, but also walls, trails, roads, and large monumental buildings, such as pyramids, temples, and palaces, all of which embody, represent, and materialize power as control over human labor (Earle 2001; Trigger 1990; Abrams 1994). Earle continues: “The scale and spatial arrangement of monuments show how labor was organized and controlled in the institutionalization of power held by leaders who would be rulers” (2001, 110). Furthermore, these monuments serve a specific role in the institutionalization of power: “monuments. . . are built to define space and restrict rights of access within emerging political economies” (111). Earle applies his model to Hawaiian chiefdoms: “The chiefdoms, created by conquest, were institutionalized by the construction of facilities and monuments that then were the stages for major ceremonies” that embodied these new political institutions (123).
However, most political anthropologists also see the political process materialized primarily in ceremonies or political rituals. To understand this perspective, we need to conceive of political power not as something abstract that is held by certain people in some “bank of political power” but rather as what is seen and heard or embodied and demonstrated in actions and/or rituals. In Ritual, Politics and Power, Kertzer (1988) describes the centrality of rituals to all political systems and hence to political power, arguing against the previously dominant idea that “political ritual merely serves to bolster the status quo” (2). Kertzer defines ritual as “culturally standardized, repetitive activity, primarily symbolic in character, aimed at influencing human affairs” and as action “that follows highly structured, standardized sequences and is often enacted at certain places and times that are themselves endowed with special symbolic meaning” (8-9). Symbols are critical as the chief content of rituals, even though their most important features (“condensation of meaning, multivocality, and ambiguity”) may seem to make them weak tools (11; here Kertzer is building on the foundational work of Victor Turner). Kertzer describes how rituals and associated symbols build political organizations and legitimacy by guiding how organizations are viewed and by linking people to them (15-21). Rituals can serve to institute the symbols associated with the organization, but at the same time they can themselves be symbols of that organization (21).
Kertzer asserts that “in nonliterate societies, where no written [documents] exist, rituals are especially important” (18) because individuals need them in order to identify with the political regime (see also Kimmel 1989, 1273). Political rituals that relate the local to the national or to the larger polity are critical in the evolution of larger complex societies: “Identification of the local with the national can take place only through the use of symbols that identify the one with the other” (Kertzer 1988, 21). Among such rituals, we find rites of allegiance, the construction of local monuments that symbolize the larger polity, and rituals of royal procession (21-23).
Kertzer writes that political reality is constructed by and through these rituals, engendering both change and stability: “The struggle to elicit political support thus involves the struggle to establish one schema [that of the political elite] as the appropriate one for interpreting experience” (8182). Rather than dismissing the emotional side of these political rituals, Kertzer stresses the importance of emotions in gaining political support: “The emotional climate that ritual can create is itself a powerful molder of beliefs and perceptions” (86), adding that “if political rites encourage certain interpretations of the world, they do so in no small part because of the powerful emotions that they trigger” (99). Political rituals create power by promoting solidarity around (and hence support for) the leaders who direct or sponsor these ceremonies (ibid.). This solidarity can be achieved even if consensus about the meanings of the symbols or beliefs does not exist (66-71). Furthermore, “ritual can produce a harmony of wills and action as people play out their appointed roles” (71).
Because of their centrality in creating political reality, rituals are seen as loci where political power is produced and contested: “Far from simply propping up the status quo, ritual provides an important weapon in political struggle, a weapon used both by contestants for power within stable political systems and by those who seek to protect or to overthrow unstable systems” (Kertzer 1988, 104). The intersection of the political with the ritual is brought to life in the political structure of the kingdom of Benin in Western Africa during the nineteenth century: “Every political role. . . implied ritual roles. The distribution of rights, duties, and privileges among the complex hierarchies of officialdom received constant expression in an endless series of palace rituals” (Bradbury 1967, 27).
Foucault (1978a, 1978b) has emphasized the importance of spectacle (or performance) in the exercise of power in premodern states (see also Rouse 2005, 98). As just discussed, Kertzer (1988) has used a similar argument for modern states as well. In his review of the importance of performance in premodern polities, Inomata (2006b) echoes Foucault, Kertzer, and others by emphasizing that political power was what was seen: “Subject populations’ perception and experience of authorities and national unity were highly uneven, accentuated in the specific temporal and spatial contexts of state-sponsored events such as ceremonies and construction projects. . . , [in] the tangible images of the ruler’s body, state buildings, and collective acts” (805). Ritual as performance is doubly important in premodern societies because, as Kertzer states, “In the absence of writing, it was ritual that defined people’s power relations” (1988, 104, my italics). Therefore, if we are to understand political power in premodern, noncapitalist societies, we must consider both the performances of political power (political rituals) and their contexts in political institutions.
My argument is not that what we see in political ritual is all there is to ancient politics, because clearly plenty of “political deals” happen behind closed doors. Rather, the visible in political performances is just as important as what takes place behind closed doors. The dynamics of political power are caused by both what happens in public political rituals and what happens in private settings. But even decisions reached behind closed doors find public form in that they have to be carried out publicly by political officials and they depend on the obedience (or disobedience) of commoners. To understand political dynamics, therefore, we need to consider the archaeological materials left behind by ancient peoples not as pale reflections of political, social, economic, and religious structures but as playing a much more dynamic and active role: they are “the material traces of the process through which power was authorized in different times and places, the objects and spaces that were mobilized in negotiations of authority” (Fleisher and Wynne-Jones 2010, 189; see also Smith 2003). These objects and spaces are tools in the ongoing process of achieving, maintaining, changing, or contesting relations of power: “Just as power is only constituted through its enactment, objects are only powerful through the ways that they are implicated [used] in the activities through which authority is created” (Fleisher and Wynne-Jones 2010, 190; see also DeMarrais 2005; Meskell 2005; Miller 2005).
Because political performances involve large numbers of people and sometimes special clothing and objects, feasting, and music, they require economic resources. For this reason, political elites may be constantly in need of more economic resources. Eisenstadt (1993) and Yoffee (2005) have argued that ruling elites must search for “free-floating resources,” or resources not tied to other social structures, such as goods or labor obtained outside the polity through warfare and trade or foodstuffs obtained through the intensification of agriculture on elite-owned lands.
World History
