Ideology, Power and Prehistory

166 Pages·1984·16.3 MB·English

by  Daniel Miller

NEW DIRECTIONS IN ARCHAEOLOGY
Editors
Richard Bradley
Reader in Archaeology, University of Reading
Timothy Earle
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California,
Los Angeles
Ian Hodder
Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Glynn Isaac
Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Colin Renfrew
Disney Professor of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Jeremy Sabloff
Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Andrew Sherratt
Assistant Keeper, Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford
Martin Wobst
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
IDEOLOGY,
POWER
AND PREHISTORY

IDEOLOGY,
POWER AND
PREHISTORY
EDITED BY DANIEL MILLER
AND
CHRISTOPHER TILLEY
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First published 1984
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CONTENTS
To my mother (C. T.) List of contributors vi Preface vii
To my father (D.M.) Part one
Theoretical perspectives 1
Ideology, power and prehistory: An introduction
Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley 1
Part two
Ideology and Power in the Present and Historical Past 17
Endo ceramics and power strategies
Alice Welbourn 17
Interpreting ideology in historical archaeology: The
William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland
Mark Leone 25
Modernism and suburbia as material ideology
Daniel Miller 37
Part three
Ideology and Power in Prehistory 51
Burials, houses, women and men in the European Neolithic
Ian Rodder 51
Economic and ideological change: Cyclical growth in the
pre-state societies of Jutland
Michael Parker Pearson 69
Ritual and prestige in the prehistory of Wessex c. 2,200-
1,400 BC: A new dimension to the archaeological evidence
Mary Braithwaite 93
Ideology and the legitimation of power in the Middle
Neolithic of Southern Sweden
Christopher Tilley 111
VI
Part four
Conclusions 147
Ideology, power, material culture and long-term change
Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley 147
Index 153
CONTRIBUTORS
Mary Braithwaite, Department of Archaeology, University of
Cambridge.
Ian Hodder, Department of Archaeology, University of
Cambridge.
Mark Leone, Department of Anthropology, University of
Maryland.
Daniel Miller, Department of Anthropology, University College,
London.
Michael Parker Pearson, Department of Archaeology, University
of Cambridge.
Christopher Tilley, Department of Archaeology, University of
Cambridge.
Alice Welbourn, Department of Archaeology, University of
Cambridge.
Vll
PREFACE
This volume arises out of a symposium held at the third Theoreti- archaeological data and contemporary material culture. It makes
cal Archaeology Group conference, Reading, U.K. in December the past irreducibly the creation of sentient social actors and
1981. Most of the papers are, however, either extensively revised allows us to come both to a better understanding of it and of
or use quite different examples from the original presentations. ourselves.
All but one of the contributors to this volume also wrote papers We recognise that this is only one of a number of attempts,
for an earlier publication in this series, Symbolic and Structural at present being conducted, which seek to reorientate the nature
Archaeology (Hodder, Ed. 1982). The ideas that form the focus of archaeological theory and practice. We are grateful for any
of this volume were one of a number to be tentatively explored interest and criticisms that have been given to us in the past from
there. people working with similar or very different problems. In par-
A consideration of ideology and power means that we are ticular we should like to thank other members of the Cambridge
no longer able simply to 'read off the nature of past societies Seminar Group who have not contributed papers here, and all
from material evidence. Instead the archaeological record must those who at the conferences, in seminars and in coffee rooms
be understood as actively mediated and manipulated as part of have stimulated the development of these ideas. Our warmest
the social strategies of the individuals and groups that constituted personal thanks must go to those people who worked so hard to
a past society. Material culture can be used to express interests contribute to the book and were patient enough to put up with us
and ideas which may very well be contradictory. In order to as editors.
understand ideology and power successfully a historical, par-
ticularist and contextual approach to the evidence is fundamental.
This allows us to tackle both the variability and the specificity of April 1983 Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley

Chapter 1
Ideology, power
and prehistory:
PART ONE an introduction
Daniel Miller and
Theoretical perspectives Christopher Tilley
This volume is first shown to form part of a larger dialogue arising
from some critiques of the dominant models in archaeological theory. In
particular, it is part of an attempt to credit people and society in prehistory
and material culture studies with the same abilities as we credit ourselves,
rather than reducing them to the passive recipients of external forces.
Two general discussions then follow, a summary is given of some
approaches to the concept of power, and in particular a description and
critique of Foucault's recent work on this topic is used as the basis for
developing a working model of power. A model for the critique of
ideology is developed through the examination of three examples. Firstly
Marx's critique of the bourgeois conception of the political economy,
secondly Marx's own labour theory of value, and thirdly the implications
of three recent critiques of Marx's work. From these are derived some
general characteristics of a working model for the critique of ideology,
which differs in a number of respects from the original example of Marx's
writings.
A problem in archaeology has always been that its method
has provided the dominant metaphor for its interpretation.
Before all else, archaeology has been about discovery. It is as
quest and search that archaeology first commanded and now
continues to fascinate its wide audience. This is encapsulated in
the image of the archaeologist finally clearing a way through the
last of the jungle to reveal the ancient ruined city, or burrowing
through placid fields and orchards to uncover the unsuspected
evidence of antiquity. In recent times the urge to discover has
become a more fine-grained, refined ambition to locate all that
might have been missed by the grand dig, to note the small seeds,
the ghosts of wooden walls, the first clearance of trees.