In 1979, Carole Crumley published a paper on settlement and land-use across three millennia in southern Burgundy, in which she made a clear, convincing and passionate argument that archaeological process can only be understood if archaeologists work from the premise of complexity, assume that societies will be dynamic, and take account of both time and space in interpreting how and why change occurs (Crumley Reference Crumley1979). She went on to explain the inadequacies of conventional models, in terms of hierarchy, for meeting those criteria and interpreting the evidence of that study. Hierarchy could not account for relationships that were never structured in terms of rank, in which ranking was mutable, and in which relationships between organisational elements were dynamic. Her new, alternative proposition of heterarchy—elements within an organisational structure that are unranked in relation to each other, or may be ranked dynamically, that is, in a number of ways “depending on systemic requirements”—has steadily grown in influence over the following 43 years (Crumley Reference Crumley1979: 144). T.L. Thurston and Manuel Fernández-Götz's handsome edited volume on archaeologies of power may, as she suggests in her Preface, represent a substantive paradigm shift away from hierarchy towards heterarchy's more inclusive conceptual approach.
The book itself is a pleasure to handle. It is beautifully presented in hardback, printed on high quality paper, with an attractive layout and clearly printed figures in black and white. Each chapter is well-argued, thoughtful and stimulating. Most authors discuss theoretical approaches to heterarchy, collectivity and/or resistance through the lens of premodern cases respectively drawn from Europe, Mexico, the USA, China or Papua New Guinea. Some focus particularly on evidence for cooperation between ‘peasant’ or ‘commoner’ groups and communities, others on such groups’ subversion of, or opposition to, powerful elites. Taking a higher level approach, Lane Fargher and Richard Blanton report on their data analysis of the relationship between rural institutional complexity and community social capital and the degree of collective action, based on 30 samples drawn from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Meso- and South America. In considering applications of heterarchy across a range of periods and geographical contexts, the strengths and weaknesses of the model are sufficiently well-tested for the volume as a whole to offer a powerful challenge to ‘top-down’ interpretations of the past.
The editors themselves contribute an outstanding cross-disciplinary historiography. Beginning with an overview of the development of archaeological theory on ‘power from below’, they move on to an astonishingly broad-ranging discussion of models for framing thinking about premodern communities and collective identity, and “the diversity and dynamism of power relationships” within them (p. 26). Ranging across history, economics, sociology, human geography and political science to archaeology, anthropology and ethnography, the editors offer a satisfyingly inclusive synopsis of theories, models and problems in conceptualising power.
Some authors deal with theoretical issues head-on. Paul Roscoe offers a persuasive critique of heterarchy, in which he cogently deconstructs problems in operationalising the model. As he points out, neither ‘elements’ nor ‘ranking’ nor ‘systems’ in heterarchy are defined. Nor, as importantly, is there clarity about its objectives, how it originates, works in practice, or persists over time. He goes on to propose two possible solutions. First, that problems with the ontology of heterarchical and hierarchical polities might be resolved by approaching them on the basis of Giddens’s proposition of agency: that since agency is intrinsic to all individuals, power relationships should be regarded as dialectical contests and resistance simply as a means of using that power in unexpected ways. And, second, that explanations in terms of social signalling may help to resolve questions of how and why heterarchies persist over the longer term.
David Fonteijn takes an alternative approach, whose clarity of argument is equally convincing. In deliberate counterpoint to models focused on the power of individuals, he points out what should be obvious: that conceptions of power—how it is defined, who has it and how they use it—are expressions of collectively agreed social norms that structure what is regarded as acceptable behaviour between individuals and within groups. Rejecting Giddens’s proposition of the individual as a locus of power, Fonteijn argues that power is a manifestation of an agreed framework of social relations, within which individuals and communities operate and to which they are subordinate. It operates dynamically “within a broader framework which seeks to uphold social cohesion, ethics and morality” (p. 101) whether in hierarchical or heterarchical contexts.
More generally, however, a common flaw in some chapters is the absence of specificity about what is meant by groups central to their arguments that are designated as ‘commoners’, ‘peasants’, ‘subalterns’ or ‘subordinates’. The composition of those groups is undefined and their heterogeneity unknown (and questionable); nor is there any sense of the social contexts within which they operated. There is a similar lack of clarity about what is meant by ‘collective’ or ‘community’ and how such groups and/or their activities were composed and structured. There is sometimes also too great a reliance on what ‘would (or could) have’ happened. ‘Would/could have’ expresses an outcome conditional on some other state or action. For example, if there had been resistance to hierarchical organisation, then mechanisms of self-regulation may have been developed; if leaders wished to establish a new revenue stream, then they may have drawn it from urban populations. Since the initial conditions are not supported with evidence, the asserted outcomes that follow are null. They are essentially counterfactual, imaginary. That such issues are easily remedied indicates that reworking of some of the research reported here might produce even more interesting results.
The editors and their 17 collaborators have constructed a compelling, perhaps essential, foundation for innovation in archaeological research in presenting complex, nuanced, alternative models for investigating non-hierarchical political structures and/or resistance to existing or developing hierarchies. They have more than succeeded in meeting their objective of offering new trajectories for research taking heterarchy as a model. The volume is likely to remain an indispensable reference for years to come.
