Archaeological studies of political organization draw paradigms, models, and concepts from political anthropology in order to describe, define, and understand ancient politics in a broad cross-cultural perspective (Kurtz 2001; Claessen and Skalnik 1978, 1981; Claessen and van de Velde 1987, 1991; Claessen, van de Velde, and Smith 1985; Claessen and Oosten 1996; Roscoe 1993; Haas 2001a, 2001b; Vincent 1990). In this chapter, I describe how political anthropologists have approached political power and how their approaches have influenced archaeology. Political anthropology has moved from earlier paradigms of political evolution and political economy to the functional and processual-action1 paradigms of the early and midtwentieth century, and finally, to the postmodern approach (Kurtz 2001; Vincent 1990).
Political power within ancient complex societies has come to be seen as fragmentary and as fluid as in today’s modern states. Rather than conceiving of elites as the only power holders in ancient societies, anthropologists and archaeologists now argue that all members of a society have some power, even if they have less than the rulers and the political elite. Because power is not considered to be a static quantity that is held by elites only, it is seen as relational and conflictive; leaders and followers are constantly engaged in a virtual tug of war. Legitimacy and authority are at the heart of the relationship between leaders and followers, and recent explorations of political power have moved away from studies of the economic foundations of ancient governments to the study of the ideational means by which rulers, leaders, and governments persuaded their followers to support them. The key to ancient political dynamics was the degree to which ways of establishing legitimacy and maintaining power succeeded or failed.
Current political anthropology also draws attention to political ritual as the locus where power was materialized and embodied. In ancient societies, as Kertzer (1988) underlines, political reality and people’s power relations were constructed by and through rituals.
After briefly summarizing the different approaches to political power that predominate in political anthropology, I hope to make several points in this chapter: first, that political power has multiple sources and that to understand how it works, we need to explore the specific sources used in the society under scrutiny; second, that political power is based on the contested relationship between leaders and followers and that political actors will actively pursue strategies that strengthen this relationship; third, that political power is also formed through cooperation and alliance and that “power to” (an individual’s ability to do what he or she wants) may be in tension with “power over” (the ability of some to get others to do their bidding) (Miller and Tilley 1984); fourth, these dynamics find form in rituals, discourses, and ideologies promoted by the different active political factions and/or political institutions in any society.
World History
