As discussed at the beginning of this chapter (2.2), neo-evolutionary theory and the early state model have been widely applied by scholars to explain all ancient societies, both their development and their structure. Twenty years after Claessen and Skalníks publication of The Early State (1978), came a volume titled Archaic States, edited by Gary M. Feinman and Joyce Marcus (1998). It is interesting to note that whereas the 1978 publication of Claessen and Skalník speaks of the “early state” in the singular, the 1998 publication speaks of “archaic states” in the plural. As will be seen in the following, the perspective has been widened to include contestation of hierarchy as well as alternative trajectories to the development of states. In recent decades, approaches have become more discursive, as power is analysed in terms of social relations and not mere economic facts, e.g. people’s relations to the means of production. These new approaches are dialectic, in that they highlight the interplay between social structures and human agents, and the impact of new directions in sociology represented by Giddens and Bourdieu is evident.
Richard E. Blanton, in his contribution to Archaic States suggests a discursive approach to archaic states, an approach, he argues, that “points to the fact that social life consist of a discursive interaction of social structure, carried intergenerationally,
and social actors pursuing varied goals”.263 To achieve this, he divides power into the subcategories of material and cognitive-symbolic dimensions that, although they are likely to be mobilised simultaneously, help illustrate trends in the evolution of archaic states.264 Blanton distinguishes between exclusionary power strategies and corporate power strategies. The strategies for systemic exclusionary domination are
characterised by state control of prestige goods and craft specialists in the material or objective dimension and correspondingly in the cognitive-symbolic dimension by a patrimonial view of society, divine rulership, and imperialism. The corporate power strategy, on the other hand, in its material dimension is redistributive, based on euergetism, and decentralised regarding prestige-goods systems. In its cognitive- symbolic dimension, it is characterised by accountability of the ruler, commonwealth government, reflexive communication, decentralisation of sources of power, and the “semiautonomous functioning of lower-order subsystems”.265
Following Blanton’s analysis, power is expressed both in material relations and symbolic representations that mutually reinforce each other. The different strategies for power are pursued simultaneously, meaning that at the central level, a ruler can emphasise his own person and centralised institutions of power, whereas at the local level, communities can emphasise cooperation and communal decisions. Both strategies can be found at work at the same time, so that integration in the polity operates both horizontally and vertically. In Blanton’s terms, the strategy of the ruler is called an élite strategy, whereas that of the community is called a corporate strategy.
263 Blanton, “Beyond centralization,” 1998, 140 264 Blanton, “Beyond centralization,” 1998, 143
As argued in chapter 1 (1.2.3; 1.4.2), in order to describe competition for power and the dynamics of communities, I find it necessary to divide the élite and corporate strategy into narrow and broad subcategories. On a general level, there is a difference of élite and corporate strategies in that the élite regards itself as a different kind altogether, whether they are a group of aristocrats or an individual king and his family, i.e. a broad or a narrow élite respectively. The broad or narrow corporations, on the other hand, hold that they have more in common than being separate. The criteria for equality will be stricter for a narrow than for a broad corporation, but at least in theory, someone from the masses can aspire to the narrow corporation given that he becomes able to meet the necessary requirements. The distinction between a broad élite and a narrow corporation must be attempted in each particular case. It is necessarily blurry and will be easiest to define when their self-assessment is available in the sources.
Recently, David B. Small has attempted to apply a dual-processual model of strategies for power to ancient Greece.266 He demonstrates that at ancient Priene, the
archaeological record of contexts for interaction and evidence from inscriptions can be analysed to give a picture of the dualistic relationship between networking and corporate strategies for power within the polity.267 However, his analysis of the
evidence of Priene shows that it can be difficult to discern between networking and corporate strategies, because in some contexts, a corporation will be very exclusive, exemplified by meetings of community honorands at the Panionion sanctuary.268
Thus, a broad élite can also be understood as a narrow corporation. The only way to definitely determine this is when the criteria for membership in the group are
266 Small, “The dual-processual model in ancient Greece,” 2009, 205-221 267 Small, “The dual-processual model in ancient Greece,” 2009, 209-214 268 Small, “The dual-processual model in ancient Greece,” 2009, 217
available to modern scholars. This is unfortunately not often the case, and many arguments must remain inferential.
As argued above (2.7) the analysis of society as the interplay between agents and their strategies for power means the abandonment of models of the early state type. This is a perspective that has become more explicit among scholars in recent years. Norman Yoffee, in the book polemically titled Myths of the Archaic State, argues that “the central concern in studying the evolution of the earliest states is not to identify an essencialised and reified political structure (“the state”), but to explain the mechanisms through which social units that were becoming progressively
differentiated were reassembled”.269 In his analysis of state formation, Yoffee follows
Michael Mann and his approach to power, discussed above (2.7.3), as derived from ideological, economic, military, and political sources.270 Yoffee subsumes political
power under economic power.271 Mann and Yoffee’s approach to power as having several sources has the advantage of making power rest with several groups that together make out the totality of society.
In order to explain the emergence of states, Yoffee emphasises that “three main dimensions of power and the different means of achieving power – the struggle for control of economic resources, control of knowledge, ceremonies, and symbols, and control of armed forces – need to be co-evolving for states to emerge, since these three sources of power all reinforce one another”.272 In his analysis, the formation of
early states was characterised by heterarchy, different hierarchies coming together. He
269 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 34 270 Cf. Mann, The sources of social power, 1986, 22-27 271 Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic state, 2005, 34-38 272 Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic state, 2005, 38
points out that this process might also be reversed into dissolution of the polity.273 Yoffee draws attention to the question how people came to live “in a variety of differentiated social organizations and the nature of power within these
organizations”.274 In his analysis, contrary to the early state model, “the earliest states
“integrated” these social organizations only loosely, and rulers and elites were constantly concerned to communicate a dominant way of meaning. Non-elites or peripheral elites accepted, negotiated their lives under, or struggled against these terms”.275 In Yoffee’s analysis, an example of these negotiations can be found in the
relations between central and local authorities in Mesopotamia: law-making by Mesopotamian kings never supplanted assemblies; quite the contrary, the
communities kept their decision-making organisations and developed them within city-state structures.276 Yoffee points out that “bureaucrats of the crown were also members of the community or of entrepreneurial families and organizations, and on the level of individuals there are many identities and social roles that cannot be neatly separated into either the community or the state, since people can be members of both”.277 Yoffee can thus be said to argue against the two-sector model and its
separation of central institutions and local communities (cf. 2.3). The application of the two-sector model to Near Eastern societies is discussed further in chapter 5 (5.8).
Following the arguments of Yoffee, states must be examined not only as the
institutions and symbols for the division of rulers and ruled. Rather, processes of both horizontal and vertical integration must be taken into consideration. This position has
273 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 38. The concept of heterarchy is defined and explored in Ehrenreich, Crumley & Levy (eds.), Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies, 1995
274 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 41 275 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 41 276 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 112 277 Yoffee, Myths of the archaic state, 2005, 137
been argued throughout this chapter. Throughout the analyses of the present
investigation, the local communities will be taken into consideration, not just in their relation to the central authorities, but also as self-regulating communities. The relations between local councils and officials and the local communities form an especially promising field of study for an investigation of popular power. This investigation is difficult, however, because so much of the available evidence strictly refers to the élite sphere of society. Against Yoffee’s point about bureaucrats of the crown living in local communities, it could be argued that professionalism would prevent any consideration of local community interests by bureaucrats, and that sources to their activities would only inform us about central institutions. However, as will be seen in the analyses throughout the present investigation, there is evidence for the integration of local and central levels of authority as well as for collective decision-making that were not controlled by the central hierarchy.