Religious Ritual and Wari State Expansion

The role of ritual and religion in the expansion of archaic states is often overlooked in favor of militaristic or economic explanations. In chapter 6, Williams and Nash explore religious ritual practice in the reproduction of social order at the Wari (600–1000 CE) colony in Moquegua, Peru, focusing on ritually important activities in three architecturally distinctive ceremonial structures around Cerro Baúl: Wari D-shaped temples; huaca shrines; and Titicaca Basin–inspired platform-sunken court complexes. Activities in all these structures take place contemporaneously on and around the Wari citadel situated on the 600-meter-tall mesa on the southern Wari frontier. According to the authors, the diverse rites in these complexes promoted the promulgation of distinct elite identities within the cosmopolitan sphere of what constituted Wari provincialism. However, it is the inclusiveness of ritual practice in the Wari centers that is most distinctive of Wari doctrine. It is through this incorporation of elite diversity in particular places on the landscape that Wari was able to weave together the foundations for pluralism that constituted Wari religious hegemony.

Variation and Change in Archaic States

Humans cooperate in social networks that are larger, more complex, and generally exhibit greater diversity than those of other mammals. Though the behaviors and social mechanisms that sustain these often multigenerational arrangements remain incompletely understood, ritual has been proposed as one important factor that contributes to the resilience and reproduction of human social formations. Underpinned by recent interdisciplinary and comparative analyses of ritual and cooperation, the diversity of human ritual practice during the preindustrial past is considered in this chapter with a focus on archaic (preindustrial) states. Concepts for framing variation and change in ritual practice are advanced with particular consideration given to the axes of scale and modes of cooperation.

Discussant

The discussion chapter contextualizes the essays in this volume on the scholarship of ritual and archaic states. It highlights the importance of ritual as an inherent part of a cultural narrative in past and present societies alike, and how, by studying ritual and its relationship to cultural practices and social organization, we can better understand diverse social groups. The review of the chapters stresses how the authors provide a variety of methodological and interpretive tools. These include the cautious use of ethnographic and ethnohistorical analogy, phenomenological recreations–based universals of human perception and movement, and minute analysis of the discards of ritual and performances, from trash to valued items placed with the deceased.

Rituals and Ceremonies at the Mycenaean Cemetery at Dendra

Chapter 4 focuses on the ritual practices connected with the burials at the Late Bronze Age cemetery at Dendra in the Argolid in Greece, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. During this time, the central Argolid became an archaic state with a pronounced site hierarchy, with Mycenae at the top. In the settling process of this power structure, the various practices, including mortuary ritual, were characterized by competition and the negotiation of sociopolitical positions. Part of the material evidence connected with mortuary practices at the Dendra site and its surrounds is used in Schallin’s analysis of the components of the rituals as she proposes a possible scenario of how the burial practices were materialized at Dendra and how they can be seen as a constituent part in the strategies of elite legitimation. In short, Schallin examines material evidence to identify various components in the mortuary ritual at the Dendra cemetery while suggesting how this ritual linked with the network-type political system at Mycenae.

The Variety of Ritual Experience in Premodern States

Any turn to collective action in polity-building will create a fertile ground for argumentative discourses about human nature as well as about new cultural production that aims to transform entrenched cultural designs. This chapter addresses how ritual may play a role in such discourses. While no classifying system will properly capture all the nuance and complexity of ritual practice, to add substance to my comparative exercise I follow Stanley Tambiah’s sense that some rituals can be understood as “constitutive” acts, serving to reaffirm that which is bound by convention and not subject to conscious evaluation. For example, Balinese political rituals serve to reaffirm the central, unquestioned, and timeless fact of Balinese kingship (legitimacy of rule)—the sanctified status of corporeal god-kings. By contrast, I found that in the more collective polities, ritual, as Tambiah explains, can more often be understood to “regulate a practical or technical activity … without actually constituting it.” Rather than to “astonish thousands of peasants” and thereby reproduce the central structural property of a government, as in Bali, the civic rituals of the more collective polities allow for a rational evaluation of the polities’ operative principles and their theories of human nature.

The Architecture of Ritual and Polity at Chaco Canyon

Chapter 8 examines the one state-like polity the U.S. Southwest produced: Chaco, named for the central capital at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Chaco was a secondary or derivative state reflecting the form of Mesoamerican city-states. Public ritual almost certainly served and shaped the state, justifying political decisions and developments. Ritual, thus understood, shaped the architecture of Chaco’s urban core and the form of its region. Chaco’s polity continued for almost six centuries (the tenth through the fifteenth) in successor capitals, first at Aztec Ruins and last at Casas Grandes in Chihuahua, Mexico. Southwestern archaeology’s current obsession with ritual obscures this political history.

The Role of Ideology in Emerging Hierarchies at Late Archaic and Early Horizon Sites along the Central Coast of Peru

This chapter discusses how stone monuments at selected Late Archaic (3000–1800 B.C.) and Early Horizon (1200–200 B.C.) sites on the north central coast of Peru provide insights into social transformation processes across collective and autocratic societies. The monuments under analysis are upright stone slabs (huancas) found at a number of Late Archaic sites in the Norte Chico region, as well as the row of towers at Chankillo dated to the late Early Horizon in the Casma Valley. Christie and Piscitelli argue that these upright stone monuments demarcated places and spaces in which people coordinated collective actions representing varying trajectories of social change. The political and ritual landscapes constructed at the Norte Chico and Chankillo sites were decidedly inward-oriented, concerned with establishing community centers and creating order. The sheer scale of the settings and the related coordination of ritual use there suggest emerging elites and corporate hierarchies. Following the trajectory of an expansionist state on the other hand, the Inca political landscape looks outward from long-existing centers. Comparative study of stone monuments and their associated ideologies, along with the study of place-making, can help illuminate social changes in the Andes over time.

Feasting and Burials on the Peruvian Central Coast at the Onset of the Middle Horizon

Drawing from ethnohistorical sources, many Andean scholars have modeled Inca expansion as a highly ritualized political process, with feasting and ritual performance as its principal components. This model was long projected onto all Andean societies on the assumption that feasting activities were similarly important and played similar political roles across societies over time. Other voices have proposed that burial practices and ancestor veneration were also of central political importance in the Andean states’ expansionist projects. Ancestor veneration was thought to be the ideological base that upheld these entire systems. Increasingly, however, new voices are proposing that ancestor veneration and burial practices need to be understood in relation to feasting practices. It is only in this relational way that we can fully understand their political and social meanings. In chapter 5, Flores proposes that this is particularly true in cases where local communities interact with expansionist polities. He argues, based on evidence from Lote B, a small rural settlement in the Lurín Valley, that the increase of feasting activities is related to the suppression of funerary practices or vice-versa. This inverse correlation not only informs us about the nature of an expansionist project but also about the compromise that takes place between local communities and expansionist polities in turn.

Same, Same, but Different

This chapter explores how two contemporary and culturally related archaic states, Pylos and Mycenae, manipulated ritual to communicate and create status. By exploring the evidence for rituals in these two Greek Bronze Age states, I illustrate that although each was using ritual to express and confirm the elevated status and identities of their elites, both states used different types of ritual to achieve this. In the final periods of the palace’s use, Pylos’s architectural similarity to Mycenae increased, yet it began to differ in its use and location of ritual. As the state of Pylos grew in size, status, and power, it deemphasized burial rituals in favor of palace-based rituals, such as feasting and the making of sacrifices in the palace’s most elaborately decorated room. By contrast, Mycenae continued to invest significant labor and wealth in its burials while also reserving areas such as the cult center for ritual use and for conducting large-scale feasts. Chapter 3 highlights the need for and value of detailed contextual analysis of individual states in any society in order to clarify the reasons behind their similarities and differences.