The materialization of power and the indentification of political models in the archaeological...

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L’EntrevistaRandall McGuireEstrat Jove

Articles Científics Orígens del Neolític al Sud d’Amèrica: una aproximació a les cul-tures de Valdivia i Las VegasPedro Àlvaro Hervalejo Sànchez

Seeds and statistics at Tell Shyukh Tahtani, Syria Nikolah Gilligan

O Petróglifo das Pedragueiras Asociación Cultural Colectivo a Rula

Power and Politics in the Archaeological Context Emilio Rodríguez

La lògica de l’espai construït al Sudest de la península Ibérica du-rant l’Argar (1200 – 1550 cal ANE): Una aproximación metodolò-gica.Hendaya Serrano Gil

Problemas metodológicos para una arqueologia (materialista y)dialèctica. Un debate inacabado. Segio Almisas Cruz

Articles de CríticaEl Mercat del Born, arqueologia social o santuari patriòtic? BrunaPelegrín García

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Estat, repressió i lluita social Xavi Pellicer

DossiersIntroducció a l’Antracologia: Mètodes i pràctiques Laura Obea

Breu introducció de mètodes y tècniques en arqueologia sub-aquàtica David Casares

Introducció a l’estudi dels marcadors musculoesquelèticsd’activitat física i càrrega laboral en bioarqueologia. Margalida Rivas Llompart

RessenyaHistoria de la Guerrilla Antifranquista en el Poniente Grana-dino: Elicinia Fierro Milà i Artur Rodríguez Benítez

Notícies

Arqueologia d'urgència, una realitat d'explotació laboral. Estrat Jove.

Apadrina un monument. Estrat Jove.

Problemàtica del Grau d’arqueologia. Estrat Jove.

Noticia Vaga Docents a Balears. Estrat Jove.

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The materialization of powerand the identification of political modelsin the archaeological context

Emilio Rodriguez-AlvarezSchool of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1009 East South Campus Drive, Tuc-son, AZ, 85721-0030([email protected])

ABSTRACTIn the last two decades there has been an explosion of studies dealing with the nature of power and its ex-pression on the archaeological record. We have witnessed the development of a myriad of topics of studyin the different expressions of power, from gender studies to colonialism or performance as a mean of so-cial domination However, there are fewer studies devoted to the relationship of power, the models of stateand, in concrete, the feasibility of interpreting different political models in the archaeological context andrecord.

This work is intended to be a general review of the topic. In order to achieve this, I will develop a dis-course from the more general, the definition of the terms involved in the analysis, to the more specific:which is the material expression, if any, of the different political models in which a society can be orga-nized, moving away from the traditional interpretations that most of these phenomena have had in the dis-cipline.

Keywords:Power, Artefact, Political model, Archaeological Interpretation.

RESUMEn les dues últimes dècades hi ha hagut una explosió d'estudis que tracten de la naturalesa del poder i laseva expressió en el registre arqueològic. Hem presenciat el desenvolupament d'una infinitat de temesd'estudi en les diferents expressions de poder, des de 'estudis de gènere al colonialisme o performance coma significat de la dominació socia.l No obstant això, hi ha alguns estudis dedicats a la relació de poder, elsmodels d'estat i, en concret, la viabilitat d'interpretar diferents models polítics en el context arqueològic iel seu registre.

Aquest treball pretén ser una revisió general del tema. Per aconseguir-ho exposaré un discurs des del mésgeneral, la definició dels termes implicats en l'anàlisi, específicament: quina és l'expressió material, siescau, dels diferents models polítics en els quals una societat es pot organitzar, allunyant de les interpre-tacions tradicionals que han tingut la majoria d'aquests fenòmens en la disciplina.

Paraules Clau: Poder, Artefacte, Model polític, Interpretació Arqueològica

Estrat Crític 7-8. (2014): 68-82

Rebut: 30 gener 2014; Acceptat: 15 març 2014


The Definition of Power in the SocialSciences

The definition of power in social scien-ces is an example of “debate of extre-mes” in which the definition of a singleconcept constantly fluctuates betweenthe two extreme ends of the spectrumof meanings. Thus, power has beenconsidered either the property of indi-viduals or a characteristic of the collec-tivity. For example, Schortman, Urbanand Ausec defined power as “the abi-lity to direct and benefit from the ac-tions of others (1996: 62). This idea ofachieving goals by influencing theothers was already formulated by Tho-mas Hobbes, who defined it as presentmeans, to obtain some future apparentgood (1651 [1998]).

The means to obtain these positive re-sults were also shaped in a binary clas-sification. Thus, in one extreme wehave the influence (Handy 1993) whileon the other we find coercion. The lat-ter has been a traditional attribute ofpower, mainly in the form of institutio-nalized violence of the state. We do nothave to reach the extremes of Mao Ze-dong when he declared that “Politicalpower grows out of the barrel of a gun”(2003: 224), to at least agree withWeber, who defined power as “thechance of a man or a number of men torealize their own will in a social actioneven against the resistance of others”(1968: 926). Power can be understood

as a commodity, as authority circula-ting the social system in a manner equi-valent to money (Parsons 1963), or as ageneral media of communication (Luh-mann 1979). Finally, power can be de-fined as a clash of interest (Miller andTilley 1984a) if, following Lukes, weconsider that “A exercises power overB when A affects B in a manner con-trary to B's interests” (1974: 27).

Although this list of definitions couldbe much more extent, it compiles mostof the characteristics that have been as-signed to power though time, and thatdeserve some further consideration.Thus, we must first pay attention to thedivision between those who havepower and enforce their interests andthose who accept or are forced to ac-cept these interests. This dichotomybetween rulers and ruled is actually thebasement for class struggle and dialec-tic of society in Marxism (Bottomore1983) that, at the same time, dependson class consciousness. The reason forincluding these reflections on theanalysis of the nature of power is thatthe enforcement of this power does nothave to be necessary violent, and ins-tead of coercion the ruling class can re-sort to ideology, and create the illusion,the alienation in those ruled by themthat the actual state of things and the in-terest promoted against their benefitsare actual the natural state of things(Maisels 2010).

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Another important characteristic of thenature of power is that it is self-contai-ned. No matter what the interest of therulers is; the first one is always the per-petuation of power itself. This was al-ready recognized by NiccolòMachiavelli, who addressed for the firsttime the existence of evil in the politi-cal power (1532[1976]). This negativeconnotation of power was not dispelleduntil the last quarter of the 20th c. withthe works of Michel Foucault on thenature of power.

Foucault has been central in the defini-tion of power in the social sciences(Miller and Tilley 1984a; Jamieson2000). In The History of Sexuality, hewrote: “The analysis [of power] shouldnot attempt to consider power from itsinternal point of view and...should re-frain from posing the labyrinthine andunanswerable question: 'Who then haspower and what has he in mind? Whatis the aim of someone who possessespower?' Instead, it is a case of studyingpower at the point where its intention, ifit has one, is completely invested in itsreal and effective practices.” (1981:97). As Miller and Tilley pointed out,Foucault broke the idea of power "as amonolithic and unitary mechanism, orsets of mechanisms, that can 'do' no-thing but say no." (1984a: 5; Foucault1981: 85), inherited from previous tra-ditions (Althusser 1971) and will deve-lop a model in which power isconceived as a possession with two

sides or faces, one the positive produc-tive effect on social life and the otherthe negative, repressive one. Finally,power cannot be interpreted as unidi-rectional. As Greiner and Schein (1988)pointed out, power can act downward,for example, when a company's supe-rior influences subordinates, and up-ward when the subordinates influencethe decisions of the leader.

Power covers the full spectrum ofhuman society. Thus, we cannot easilyisolate politics from other spheres inour exploration of political models inthe archaeological record. We can de-tect the use and abuse of power in amyriad of spheres, from religious ta-boos to gender-based organization ofthe household, social cast or politicalinstitutions. These spheres are isolatedentities: they are all interconnected andwork to fulfil the interest of the rulingelites. Thus, political power, which ul-timate expression is the state, is able tolegislate on other spheres, as well asother spheres of power can conditionthe legislation of the state. The imposi-tion of Christian beliefs at the end ofRoman Empire (edicts of Thessalonicaand Justinian I, 380 CE and 529 CErespectively) (Williams and Friell1994; Humfress 2005) is an example ofa secular and political institution fa-vouring, and empowering, one religionover the rest, while, in present daySpain, the new and restrictive legisla-tion of the right-wing government in

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The materialization of power and the identification of political models in the archaeological context


Spain, is clearly influenced by the offi-cial doctrine of the Catholic church inthe country (Barambio 2012; Cancio2012).

Power and Politics in ArchaeologyThe study of power in past societies, asany other approach considering ele-ments as ideology of symbols, was era-sed from the archaeological inquirywith the establishment of archaeologyas a pure anthropological discipline(Binford 1962). It was the incapabilityof processualism of formulating thesequestions what caused their incapabi-lity to address them in the archaeologi-cal context. It also caused the isolationof other sub-fields of the discipline(such as Classical Archaeology, Egyp-tology or Assyriology) that were moreused to deal with the material remainsof political systems (Alcock and Os-borne 2007; Dyson 2006; Whitley2001). This is a dichotomy that willpersist in the United States as long asthe departments of Classics would keepthe Classical Archaeologists separatedfrom the Departments of Anthropology.

However, we cannot say that politicalsystems were study in Prehistory orClassical Archaeology before the ad-vent of postprocessualism. What wehave is an interest in inequality, in thedifferentiation of classes based on thearchaeological record, on the definitionof elite based on grave goods or monu-mental architecture. The life of the

commoners, mainly in the so-called ci-vilized cultures, was only considered ofinterest in very exceptional cases(Dyers 1875; Robinson, D.M 1946;Robinson, D.M. and J.W. Graham1938; Whitley 2001). This is elegantlyillustrated, for example, by a publica-tion of the British Museum dated to1928, A Guide to the Department ofGreek and Roman Antiquities in theBritish Museum. It includes a sectioncalled “Political Antiquities” a series ofobjects related to the civic and politicallife of Ancient Greece, such as a treatyof alliance between the Eleans and He-raeans, a colonial decree from Naupac-tos and a series of Athenian ostraka(Walters 1928: 118-119). This diver-gence of evidence, mainly in the pre-sence of writing, caused a separationbetween prehistory and classical ar-chaeology that lasts until the presentday, including in the way that politicalinstitutions are addressed. James Whi-tley summarized in a strongly biasedway this lack of understanding when hewrote:

“Many prehistorians dislikeClassical Archaeology. It is not simplythat they exhibit a perfectly understan-dable preference for their own area ofprehistory; nor that they have a well-developed aesthetic preference for therough-hewn, the rude and the primi-tive; nor even that they may be somelingering resentment of the prestigethat Classical Archaeology once enjo-

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yed. Many prehistorians, at least manywho work in Britain simply do not seethe point of Classical Archaeology”(Whitley 2001: 12).

This excursus is necessary to illustratehow this division in the discipline is re-flected in the way political institutionsare interpreted in the archaeologicalcontext. After the collapse of the bin-fordian dogmatism in the 70s the ar-chaeological inquiry started to havenew interests in the study of past socie-ties. One of the first and most influen-tial works of this new line of researchwas Richard Bradley’s The SocialFoundations of Prehistoric Britain(1984). In the last chapter the authorwas able to foresee the two possible re-actions of the scientific communitywith regard to the validity of his work:

“By this stage I would antici-pate two different reactions from rea-ders: either a basic agreement thatsocial questions can be investigated byarchaeological methods, or the convic-tion that this book, rather than Steven’spoem, should be called ‘Notes towardsa Supreme Fiction’.” (emphasis in theoriginal, Bradley 1984: 157).

The material record in which the studywas based was not very different, qua-litatively, from the prestige goods andgraves used by Gordon Childe fiftyfour years before (1930) and that ac-tually helped them to start wondering

about something more than collectionsof objects. The difference lays in thequestion that was being asked. Newperspectives had been opened by pos-tprocessualism and an increasing inte-rest in more “continental” issues(Kuper 1999), and symbols and ideo-logies started to be studied in the ar-chaeological record. One of the firstsyntheses of the topic was the volumeedited by Miller and Tilley (1984a).This works contains a series of contri-butions that range from gender issues(Hodder 1984) to legitimation of powerin the Neolithic (Tilley 1984), but thereis no trace of the analysis of politicalmodels in the archaeological record.Their definition of power, in which twosenses of the noun may be distinguis-hed, power to and power over, follo-wed Foucault (1981), and refers to theintegral and recursive element in all as-pects of social life as opposed to thespecific forms of social control. Thiswill leave political power in an ill-defi-ned position, sharing analytical spacewith ideology, symbols and social con-trol. No political models were conside-red.

The result of this works and others tocome, both from processual and pos-tprocessual perspectives, encouragedthe analysis of ideology and its role inthe development of complex societies.Among them, DeMarrais (et alii 1996)were one of the first who started to ad-dress Ideology as a source of social

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power. They defined it social power as“the capacity to control and manage thelabor and activities of a group to gainaccess to the benefits of social action(1996: 15) and they identify four sour-ces of power: economic, political, mili-tary, and ideological. Here we can seepolitical directly addressed as one ofthe means of acquiring social power.This assumption is not tied to any par-ticular time and place: political powercan be found from the most egalitarianhunter-gatherers to the most complexsocieties.

This last point contrast with the workof Maisels (2010), who has producedthe most complete synthesis on thestudy of Politics and Power in the ar-chaeological record. When analysingthe emergence of the first states, he wri-tes:

“At its most basic level, politi-cal power denotes the ability of anagent to advance partisan interests inthe face of opposition. As such it is uni-versal accompaniment of human so-ciety, exercised in all aspects of humandiscourse.” (Maisels 2010: 3).

This universality of politics seems tocontrast with his statement that chief-doms are not states, and thus do nothave well defined politics, since theyare based in traditional modes of au-thority and still have a large consensualelement in its function (Maisels 2010).Since he defines the state as “[…] con-

trol over people and territory exercisedfrom a centre through specialized ap-paratuses of power.” (Maisels 2010: 2),it seems to state that a deep class dia-lectic for the state to appear, as his sta-tement about the necessity of rupturewith the consensual authority by a “su-preme leader” seems to demonstrate(2010: 8).

Although the last two models divergein their conception and extension ofpower, both agree in an essential aspectfor archaeology. Power, as any othersocial action, can be materialized andthus become part of the archaeologicalcontext. This idea was already introdu-ced by Miller and Tilley (1984b) whenthey assessed that a better understan-ding of long-term change as the contextfor the study of relationships betweensocial and material culture. Althoughthis can be considered an obvious sta-tement in archaeological praxis, it hasrarely been defined in most of theworks dealing to power. Another ex-ception is Elizabeth DeMarrais, LuisJaime Castillo, and Timothy Earle(1996) who consider that the processwhich sustain and give primacy to oneideology over the other was “groundedin the process by which these ideolo-gies are given concrete, physical form.This process is the materialization ofideology. We argue that ideology is ma-terialized in the form of ceremonies,symbolic objects, monuments, and wri-ting systems to become an effective

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source of power.” (1996: 16).

This reification of power is also analy-sed by Walker and Schiffer, who stu-died how “the acquisition of an artifactinstantiates social power by imposinginteractions on groups taking part inthat artifacts life-history activities.”(2006: 67).

Following Nielsen (1995), who de-monstrated the relationship betweenpower and architecture in order to re-produce social relations, the authors de-fined social power as the meanindividual of social entities can exer-cise their will or exert power overothers (Walker and Schiffer 2006) de-finition that correlates to the secondmeaning of power in Miller and Tilley(1984a). Although there is not an ex-plicit reference to political power, bythe establishment of “cadenas”, Wal-ker and Schiffer (2006) treat objectsand human beings as socially equiva-lent. If this agency is conferred to theobject, due to study of its life historyand artefact life (Schiffer 1976, 1995)and artefact, for the authors, is unders-tood “in material terms, to include anyhumanly made or modified object, de-vice, structure, place or system […].”(Walker and Schiffer 2006: 68) weshould be able to trace some of the ma-terial expressions that the interaction ofthe human beings with the artefact ofpolitical power produce.

The Archaeological Context of Poli-tical PowerIt was pointed out in the last sectionthat it is possible to address power inthe archaeological record, but is it alsopossible to study political models? Ifwe consider that the political system ofa society is another artefact (system)that interacts with human beings, and,thus, susceptible of leaving traces in thearchaeological contexts. In the follo-wing line I make a general classifica-tion of three different kinds ofarchaeological remains (architecture,“political tools” and textual evidence)that can serve as a basement for theanalysis of political institutions andmodels in the archaeological context.

A) Architecture:The architectonic remains of any naturehave been considered for a long timethe result of highly organized activitieswithin the community that necessaryimplied some sort of organization and,in consequence, hierarchy (e.g. Clark1937 [1960]). However, in the last de-cades, different works on Historical Ar-chaeology and colonialism have usedarchitecture to explain the relationshipsof the different strata in the society, amodel that would be replicated in thedesign of the buildings (Jamieson2000; Lucas 2004). Finally, the consti-tution of spectators as political subjectshas been elegantly explored in the edi-ted volume by Inomata and Coben(2006), although these theatres of

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power are not exactly equivalent to thepolitical arena.

The first point we have to consider isthe nature of the political organization.An egalitarian system such as Atheniandemocracy implies the participation ofa large number of citizens, as well asthe development of a series of offices,which were provided by a series ofbuildings to house them. This is howremains of the Pnyx, the gatheringpoint of the Assembly, the Bouleuterionfor the Boule Council or even the pri-son have been preserved. The commu-nal exercise of power also needed ofcourts in order to house the jurors, thatin Classical period could reach thenumber of 1001 (Camp 2001, 2010;Hölscher 2007; Osborne 2002; Van-derpool 1975; Whitley 2001). Thisdoes not imply a separation of powersin Athenian democracy, since all auc-toritas was concentrated in the demos,but it highly contrast with the concen-tration of power in other cultures. Wedo not detect this profusion of buildingsin the absolute monarchies of Egypt orthe Near East, from Summer andAkkad to the Persians. Due to the con-centration of powers in the figure of themonarch, there was no need for such aprofusion of political public buildings,and the palace would act as the centreof all this activity (Bard 2008). Thesepalaces also involved other activitiesapart from the political ones, such as ri-tuals (Bard 2008: 220-229), and are de-

corated with scenes in which specificagents, like the monarch, high officersof members of their family, are depic-ted like in the reliefs of the palace ofPersepolis (Schmidt 1953). Such asdistinction would be inconceivable inthe egalitarian political buildings.

Finally, it can be argued that all theseexamples are borrowed from highlycomplex cultures that provided us witha highly differentiated material record.However, this is not the case. Byrd ele-gantly pointed out how the houses atBasta, in Jordan, narrowed their en-trances in the PPNB, and oriented themaway from public spaces. He conside-red this a sign of individualization and,in order to compensate such loses in thecommunity cohesion, more formal andpolitical ceremonial institutions wererequired. Those were housed in large,centrally situated non domestic buil-dings characterized by a distinctive ar-chitectural style and, interestingly theabsence of trash dumping (Byrd 1994).

B) Political Objects:This is the most opened category of thethree exposed in this work, and inclu-des an almost infinite variety of items,usually studied in the research ofsymbols, such as sceptres, crowns andother regalia that allowed to identifythe figures of authority. However, Iwant to pay more attention to otherkinds of objects, not usually addressedin these analyses. The first set comes

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again from Athens. In the excavationsof the Agora and the Pnyx several itemsascribed to the praxis of democracyhave been found. Those include whiteand black pebbles used to vote in theassembly as well as ostraka, pieces ofbroken pots with the names of promi-nent citizens that the demos wanted toexpel from the city for ten years (Os-borne 2002, Whitley 2001). More thanthe artefact fetishism of finding ostrakawith the name of prominent historicalcharacters, the meticulous analysis ofthe script has demonstrated that manyof them where inscribed by the samehand, demonstrating the existence ofpolitical groups of interest in the politi-cal life of the city (Camp 2010).

Although the list of object could be ex-tended, I want to pay attention to afairly common object in the archaeolo-gical context of many cultures; thecoins. They have been, with the sculp-ture and the painted pottery, object offetishist devotion by scholars who ex-pended decades classifying them in lo-cations, mints and even series ofcoining (Dyson 2006) that have acqui-red the precision of dendrochronology.Largely, and wrongly, diminished nowbecause of its antiquarian approach, thestudy of numismatics is not only rele-vant as a mean of dating the site or theeconomy of past communities, but alsoas an expression of their symbols andpolicy. Firstly, coining is carried out byindependent states, not by subjects, so

this can be a marker of political auto-nomy in the archaeological record. Se-condly, coins are marked with differentimages in order not only to distinguishthem from one city to another (usuallyrelated to the quality of the gold or thesilver of the coin) but also as a mean oftransmission of symbols. Thus, Greekpoleis, with more or less opened politi-cal systems, struck coins that usuallyrepresent the tutelary divinity of thecity and its symbolic attributions. Thisdivinity is collective, a protection of thecommunity who also rules the city, andcan obviously decide on the imagesdisplayed in the coins. This highly con-trast with the numismae coming fromabsolute monarchies in which the divi-nity is represented along with the abso-lute ruler, that in many cases isaccompanied by his name. This pheno-menon can e easily observed in thecoins from poleis like Athens, Corinthor Aegina when compared to the exam-ples from Persia or the Hellenistic king-doms of the Diadocoi (Kleiner 1975;Kroll And Walker 1993). The sameprocess can be observed in the transi-tion from the Republic to the Principateto Rome, being the addition of his ownface to the coins one of the most pole-mic decisions of Julius Caesar(Thompson 1954) precisely because itwas identified as a symbol of monarchyand absolute power.

C) Textual and Epigraphical Evidence:The textual evidence has been one of

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the prominent battlefields between pre-historians and those archaeologistsworking with complex societies almostsince archaeology was defined as dis-cipline. Prehistorians tend to argue thattexts provide us with the code to deci-pher the social and symbolic aspects ofa culture. Although extremely neces-sary, this debate is out of the scope ofthis paper. However, I would like topoint out to two ideas that must be con-sidered in the analysis of political mo-dels in the archaeological record.

First, texts are artefacts, conditioned bythe same c- and n-transforms than anyother item in the material record. Thedesert environment of Egypt or Pales-tine can preserve delicate documentslike the Dead Sea scrolls, while otherenvironments allow only the survivalof harder supports like stone or bronze,which, on the other hand, could be reu-sed as building materials or melteddown when they lost their primary sig-nificance.

Secondly, and related to this, no ar-chaeological context is perfect and in-cludes all the evidence necessary forthe archaeologist to reconstruct past be-haviours. The German School atAthens can have a lot of epigraphic andtextual resources that can help them intheir research project at the AthenianPublic Burial Ground; however, due tothe pre-eminence of cremation in theburials, they lack the anthropological

evidence, analysis and results thatphysical anthropologists could providethem. Texts, when available, play ananalogous role in the archaeological in-terpretation to the ethnographic recordfor the study of prehistoric societies.

Writing systems are itself an evidencefor the emergence of political systems.In his interpretation of states as an or-ganized mean of taxation, Maisels(2010) points out how the developmentof writing systems allowed a bettercontrol of resources and hierarchicalpositions. As he illustrated in the deve-lopment of the state in China, the kno-wledge of the system itself is anotherway of regulating the power, since arestrictive access to the writing wasanother mean of control.

DeMarrais et alii (1996) have producedone of the most outstanding works onthe importance of the writing systems.They pointed out that “Written docu-ments, such as inscribed stelae or mo-numents, legal documents, contracts,and stories, are physical manifestationsof belief systems and, like other meansof materialized ideology, may tell astory, legitimate a claim, or transmit amessage.” (DeMarrais et alii 1996: 19).They can mislead, exaggerate or falsifythe reality, but this manipulation ofsymbols is analogous to many other ar-tefacts in the archaeological record. Forthe purpose of this study, textual evi-dence can be of great help to unders-

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tand the political organization of thecity. Aristotle Athenaion Politeia or theGortyna law code can be exceptionalcases, but the record of laws in stone orbronze is not exclusive of ancient Gre-ece. The importance of these texts isnot only based on the legal informationprovided; their display, their support,their theatrical display and their lan-guage can provide us with informationabout the political system that createdthem. Thus, Athenian laws and decrees,as a matter of public affair, where dis-played in the public space of the Agora,and always indicate that there are theresult of the will of the demos (Camp2001; Whitley 2001). In contrast, theearliest legal code known, the Ham-murabi Code, although engraved instone and publicly displayed, is not asymbol of the community, but of thewill of one ruler that, under the divinesanction of the gods Anu and Bel, le-gally unifies its country under a singlelegal rule (Harper 1904).

ConclusionPolitical power can be defined as theability given to one or several agents inorder to organize the community thathas the goal of the maintenance of thestructure but also implies the perma-nence of those who control it in theirposition of authority by means of natu-ralization of the class dialectic or theuse of coercion. This definition implies,first, that power is given to the agents,individual or communal, human or ar-

tefacts (political entities), is not an in-trinsic characteristic of them. Powercannot be mistaken with will or agency,since agency is intrinsic to the humanbeing but extrinsic to artefacts; thesecan have agency, but this is alwaysgiven, and thus external, to them. It alsoavoids the use of terms like rulers orelites since power implies, as we haveseen, a dialectic, a bidirectionality bet-ween those who control power andthose subdued to them, that by meansor social pressure or open rebellion, forexample, can influence or take awaythe power of the so-called ruling elites.

For the purposive of this study, it is ne-cessary to point out that this model im-plies the interaction and therenegotiation (of roles, status,symbols...) of agents that, like anyother behaviour, is always mediated byartefacts (Schiffer 2010). Thus, thisspecific political behaviour will need aspecific set of artefacts in the systemiccontext that, after their life-use, will be-come part of the archaeological contextand, in consequence, are susceptible ofbeing analysed by the archaeologists. Iam not arguing that a careful analysisof the archaeological record will allowus to rewrite every law and decree en-forced by a specific community of the,for example Early Bronze Age. Theaim of this paper is to demonstrate thatthe human being is a gregarious spe-cies, a zoon politikon that tends to livein community, a life that must be regu-

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lated, that needs both rules and autho-rity to enforce them, and that throughthe analysis of some aspects of the ar-chaeological context, as the examplesalready mentioned, we are able to re-construct how communities were orga-nized not based on a unilinearevolution perspective, but in the set ofvalues that they decided, through coer-cion or naturalization, to use in theircommunities.

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