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Lukurmata

Household Archaeology in Prehispanic Bolivia

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Interpreting Prehistoric Social Change

A focus on the capitals of complex societies has characterized Andean archaeology from its inception. Because of this, we know far more about urban sites than we do about villages, far more about temples than about houses, far more about regional administration than about day-to-day life. Families were constituent parts of chiefdoms, states, ayllus, waranqas, and empires, yet the household has been neglected as an important and revealing unit of study. In no place is this more evident than in traditional approaches to social change and political development in Andean prehistory. The processes of state formation, expansion, and decline have all been well studied at the regional level. But we know virtually nothing about what any of these changes meant at the lowest levels of regional settlement systems, or how these changes affected the lives of the residents of most settlements.

Like any form of history, the prehistory of different parts of the world has been created from those processes or happenings in the past that researchers have considered important and deserving of investigation. Andean prehistory has been shaped by a distinctive and traditional approach to interpreting and reconstructing sociopolitical evolution, particularly when dealing with complex societies (societies characterized by centralized government and formal positions of political power).

This chapter will discuss the strengths and limitations of the traditional archaeological approach to prehistoric social change taken by Andean archaeologists and archaeologists working in other parts of the world. Then, I will present an alternative way of examining—and researching—change in prehistoric complex societies.

Regional Approaches to the Past

Nearly forty years ago anthropologist Robert Redfield (1956:28) made a forecast: "I think we shall come to study regional systems. We shall study such systems, not, as we now tend to do, from the viewpoint of some one small community looking outward, but from the viewpoint of an observer who looks down upon the whole larger regional system."

Ironically, this prediction has proved to be more prophetic of archaeology than ethnography. While most ethnographers have remained content with a worm's-eye view of the societies they study, archaeologists have been developing the bird's-eye regional approaches—particularly to complex societies—which Redfield envisioned. The very success of these approaches has led to a situation in which in many parts of the world we now know much more about an ancient civilization's strategies of expansion, bureaucratic organization, and ruling stratum than we do about its ordinary citizens. When humble household remains are investigated, it is often only to learn more about "larger" developments.

Regional approaches to the evolution of prehistoric complex societies have generally focused on two concerns: (1) territorial organization, as seen in settlement patterns, the distribution of population, and regional artifact distributions; and (2) regional patterns of social organization, administrative decision making, craft production, and trade. These two concerns are reflected in the archaeological literature so that someone interested in, for instance, the Uruk or Susa states of fourth-millennium B.C. Mesopotamia, the prehistoric Moundville chiefdom of southeastern North America, or the Wari empire of Middle Horizon period Peru could quickly gather from the archaeological literature an understanding of how that political formation evolved as a regional system (Adams and Nissen 1972; Isbell and Schreiber 1978; Wright and Johnson 1975; Welch 1991).

Typically, a general discussion of the political formation will include information on:

• the polity's boundaries at particular points in time

• the means by which the polity expanded (conquest, indirect hegemony, alliances)

• the geographic spread of artifacts and iconographic elements characteristic of the polity, and the processes by which they spread

• how sites of different sizes and compositions interacted with one another and with the capital, often using locational constructs such as central-place theory, rank-size analysis, and nearest-neighbor analysis

• whether the settlement hierarchy represented an administrative hierarchy of political control, and if so, how many levels of administration were present

• how particular activities, such as agricultural production, trade, and craft production, were divided among the polity's settlements

• where the ruling stratum resided, where craft specialists lived, and where tribute and long-distance trade-goods were collected

What the reader would be less likely to encounter is the prosaic—a detailed treatment of the organization and evolution of domestic life in that polity. The reader would be much more likely to see maps of the polity and illustrations of its public architecture than simple house plans. If mentioned at all, households would probably be discussed in the abstract, and then only in terms of their interaction with the larger system (as providers of tribute or taxes, for instance). Similarly, a reader of the Andean archaeological literature interested in the history of a particular region would probably see the prehistory of the valley organized and presented as a sequence of polities. In Andean archaeology in general, investigation of complex societies has long focused on the origin, functioning, and demise of prehispanic political formations.

This focus on the regional in prehistory reflects more than underlying assumptions about the important elements of prehistory and prehistoric sociopolitical evolution. The paucity of information on household life would seem to reflect a basic lack of investigation: for a surprising number of prehistoric polities (particularly in the Andes), we do not even know what common dwellings may have looked like, because an example has yet to be excavated.

Importance of Regional Approaches in Anthropological Archaeology

Regional approaches to prehistoric societies should not be confused with investigative techniques that are regional in scale such as settlement survey projects. While regional surveys obviously constitute a common and important method in regional approaches, even excavations of individual dwellings can take a regional approach. Regional approaches form a distinct paradigm for investigating societal change, a paradigm with favored types of information, methods of investigation, scope of analysis, and interpretive constructs. Regional approaches share the orientation described by Redfield: an interpretive paradigm in which elements of the archaeological record (artifacts, household remains, sites) are viewed from a regional frame of reference. Communities are treated as components of a settlement system; artifacts are used to learn about intersite interaction and regional exchange networks; domestic remains provide information on social affiliation or societal differentiation.

Regional approaches in archaeology are essential to an understanding of the past. As culture history, they provide basic information on the growth and decline of many important prehistoric polities, as well as an understanding of their overall organization. Regional studies also provide the constructs needed to understand past populations as social wholes; through regional approaches archaeologists have been able to study not just individual settlements or the geographic distribution of decorative motifs on pottery, but societies. In other words, regional approaches have allowed prehistorians to write about the evolution of the Wari state, rather than simply about the spread of Wari-style objects or the development of Wari iconography (as archaeologists commonly did thirty years ago).

Regional studies have also been critical to the study of cultural evolution in general, providing a highly successful basis for cross-cultural comparisons of dynamic processes and regularities in the development of complex societies. As a result, there exists today a solid body of information concerning the characteristic regional processes in settlement, organizational complexity, and intersite interaction that accompany the evolution of ancient states.

Regional approaches allow study of how a political formation develops as an integrated entity, and permit identification of aggregate patterns not recognizable at the subregional level. As Carol Smith (1976:4) observed, "the generalizations that can be made from regional patterns of social organization are clearly of greater comparative relevance than those drawn from community ... studies alone."

Regional approaches, as a consequence, are more than simply useful for examining cultural evolution. Many of the processes long considered by archaeologists to be important in cultural evolution—such as the growth of decision-making hierarchies and supralocal political orders—can best be examined from a regional perspective (Binford 1964; Flannery 1972). An important distinguishing characteristic of complex societies, for instance, is their regional scale: the political, social, economic, and ideological structures of complex societies extend beyond the single community. Therefore, the "significant" processes in complex societies are precisely those that are regional in scope, linking individual communities (Johnson and Earle 1987).

Complementing Regional Approaches with a Household-Level Approach

Like all investigative paradigms, regional approaches have inherent strengths, limitations, and biases. Even if one believed that significant change only takes place at the regional level, regional approaches by themselves could never provide a detailed or complete understanding of social change. As valuable and successful as they have been, regional approaches need to be complemented with investigation at other scales, including that of the household.

There is always a need for differing spatial frameworks in investigating societal change. If we are interested in the sources of change and the levels at which pressures or stimuli for change operate, we need to consider as many levels of society as possible (Whalen 1981). Conversely, we also want to consider where change does not take place, which societal institutions are slow or resistant to change.

The most obvious limitation of regional approaches is that they cannot easily yield insights into household- and community-level processes, or provide direct study of processes that originate at the subregional level. Because regional approaches do not provide a "man in the street view" of many processes visible in the aggregate, or at the regional level, it is difficult to determine the segment of society affected by these processes or the extent of that effect. At the other end of the scale, it has been suggested that important processes in both simple and complex societies transcend the regional, requiring transregional or interregional approaches in order to perceive them (Paynter 1982:3–4).

Studies at the household level hold the potential to: (1) document changes not apparent at the regional level to yield a "household view" of regional processes; (2) study those evolutionary processes grounded in the household sphere; (3) provide an alternative unit of analysis to monitor social change and societal evolution; and (4) identify new dimensions of variability in complex societies. In the following pages I will explain in greater detail each of the ways household-level study can contribute to understanding prehistoric societies and social change.

A HOUSEHOLD VIEW OF REGIONAL PROCESSES

Because the household, in one form or another, is a basic social unit in most human societies, studies at the household level provide a valuable worm's-eye view of larger patterns and processes. For instance, a household is the most common unit of production in archaic agrarian societies. Therefore, changes in the larger or regional economy should have implications for domestic productive patterns, and these changes can be studied at the household level. Yet with few exceptions (Costin and Earle 1989; Hastorf 1990a; Stanish 1992), Andean archaeologists have not been concerned with analyzing domestic remains together with associated objects to gain insight into regional economies, or to provide case studies of the relationship between regional economic dynamics and shifts in household economies.

Andean archaeologists have often been content, on the basis of ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogy, to assume that particular household patterns existed in the past. Thus, in many treatments of state evolution in the prehispanic Andes, households enter the discussion only as abstract providers of mit'a labor. Yet by providing classes of data not available through regional study, archaeological investigation at the household level may produce information that contradicts generally held assumptions. An excellent example of this is Christine Hastorf's (1990a) study of Sausa domestic contexts. In a brilliant investigation of the effects of Inca conquest on the Sausa population, Hastorf tested a widely accepted assumption that Inca political economy operated outside the domestic sector, leaving the "larder of the peasant ... untouched" (Murra 1980:79). Using a variety of evidence obtained from Sausa domestic contexts, Hastorf compared Sausa household status, production, consumption, and distribution during the pre-Inca and Inca periods. These comparisons showed that incorporation into the Inca political economy did, in fact, lead to significant changes in Sausa domestic organization, particularly in production and consumption. Her study also suggested a reason for the successful expansion of the Inca state: Inca conquest could result in a "leveling" of local social status differences that improved the life of the nonelite segment of the population.

HOUSEHOLD EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES

Not all of the processes of social change that can be examined at the regional level are "regional" in origin or operation. We only choose to study these processes at the regional level. Significant processes of sociocultural evolution may be fundamentally household or "local" processes, operating or originating at the household level. Certain dynamics of prehistoric societies and political formations may best be understood by focusing on household- or settlement-level processes.

The formation of inegalitarian society, for example, does not consist of the emergence of a settlement hierarchy. This is merely a useful indicator or regional correlate of inegalitarian societies often studied by archaeologists. Inegalitarian organization develops when one household, or set of households, is able to formalize transgenerational inequalities in social status and position.

Similarly, the political economy of complex societies—while frequently studied at the regional level—may be determined by the ambitions and productive activities of households belonging to different social strata. Archaeologists dealing with processes that directly relate to broad issues of sociopolitical evolution, such as the distribution and uses of economic surplus, will be required to investigate patterns at the household level.

Anthropologists are interested in the causes of social change rather than simply describing change. From this perspective, it is important to have insights into the motivations of individuals or sets of individuals, and their frame of action. As William Mitchell (1991:21) has commented, "societies as such never do anything." Significant social changes—even social transformations—are ultimately the result of individual choices. Particular political, ecological, and cultural settings will favor certain responses over others, producing social change (ibid.). Individual actions, in turn, will alter surrounding social and cultural institutions (ibid.:184). Failing to distinguish between "individual" and "social" levels in social evolution, Mitchell (ibid. :21) argues, will "frequently cloud causal issues." From this perspective, anthropologists will ultimately need to treat individuals as actors in order to "explain" many dimensions of cultural evolution, from the shift to food production to the emergence of inegalitarian social order.

Consider, for instance, how individuals aspiring to higher social position in prehistoric societies could improve their social standing. We know from regional studies that prehistoric "big-men" and chiefly societies often displayed a great deal of long-distance trade in exotic objects. Identification of prestige-good exchange systems in the archaeological record is now fairly commonplace, often involving excavation of residential areas. Both ethnographic and archaeological studies have documented how ambitious individuals or households displayed greater participation than others in the regional exchange of status-enhancing, exotic goods. But we know much less about how such individuals used or altered their households, or household production, to increase their ability to participate in this exchange, even though ethnographic studies have described how the aspirations of big-men, for instance, shaped the activities of their household (Sahlins 1972). Nor do we know whether manipulation of household activities was a basis for sociopolitical power or differentiation in cases in which exchange of exotic goods was not important. Even in very complex societies, the household continues to be an important unit of social dynamics, and study of "microlevel" processes is critical to understanding the motivations and actions of different societal segments (Hastorf 1990b).

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Excerpted from Lukurmata by Marc Bermann. Copyright © 1994 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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