Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology.Throughout human history, people have lived in societies without formalized government. We argue that the theory of anarchism presents a productive framework for analyzing decentralized societies. Anarchism encompasses a broad array of interrelated principles for organizing societies without the centralization of authority. Moreover, its theory of history emphasizes an ongoing and active resistance to concentrations of power. We present an anarchist analysis of the development of social power, authority, and status within the Coast Salish region of the Northwest Coast. Coast Salish peoples exhibited complex displays of chiefly authority and class stratification but without centralized political organization. Ethnographically, their sociopolitical formation is unique in allowing a majority of "highclass" people and a minority of commoners and slaves, or what Wayne Suttles described as an "inverted-pear" society. We present the development of this sociopolitical structure through an analysis of cranial deformation from burial data and assess it in relation to periods of warfare. We determine that many aspects of Coast Salish culture include practices that resist concentrations of power. Our central point is that anarchism is useful for understanding decentralized (or anarchic) networks-those that allow for complex intergroup relations while staving off the establishment of centralized political authority.It is said that the history of peoples who have a history is the history of class struggle. It might also be said, with at least as much truthfulness, that the history of peoples without history is the history of their struggle against the State. (Pierre Clastres 1987:218) Archaeologists and anthropologists have had difficulty characterizing Northwest Coast cultures because these societies were socially complex but lacked centralized authorities. Many have presented Northwest Coast societies as examples of chiefdoms because of the presence of chiefs. While these leaders were often dressed in the trappings of high authority, they were not the chiefs of the classic anthropological chiefdom model, which posits figures with consolidated authority over large territories. Rather, the power of Northwest Coast chiefs was quite limited in spatial and social scale. Ames (1995) andBill Angelbeck is an independent archaeologist and anthropologist based in Seattle (

Anarchic Social Movements as an Explanation for Rapid Change: A Case Study from the Hohokam World, A.D. 1200 – 1450

“…Clearly there were environmental and social crises in the Hohokam World that are correlated with substantial social change (Borck et al 2015;Henderson and Clark 2004;Huckleberry et al 2018). But a crisis itself does not lead to horizontal organization or even standardized organizational response strategies (Angelbeck and Grier 2012;Borck and Simpson 2017;Borck et al 2015;Crumley 2003;Forrest 2021;Chance and Taylor 1985;McGuire and Saitta 1996;Yoffee 2005).…”

“…The central concept to many of these studies, though, is that these markers of vertical organization necessarily disappear. This swing from vertical to horizontal organization is part of the collapse narrative that emerges from a perspective that views hierarchy as built and horizontal organization as emerging from the natural order (for an extended discussion, see for example Angelbeck and Grier 2012;Angelbeck et al 2018;Black Trowel Collective 2016;Borck , 2019Borck , 2020Borck and Sanger 380 2017; Flexner 2014Flexner , 2020Flexner , 2021Fowles 2010aFowles , 2018Wengrow and Graeber 2015).…”

“…These practices represent cooperative actions undertaken to constrain, or disperse, the centralization of power and its potential for abuse (Angelbeck and Grier 2012). Anarchism allows for leadership roles; what Bakunin (1971) termed natural and artificial authority about 150 years ago (see also Angelbeck et al 2018, Borck and Sanger 2017, McGuire and Saita 1996.…”

Ayllus, Ancestors and the (Un)Making of the Wari State

“…Those who sought to extend sovereignty across a nascent polity of shifting people, animals and things therefore navigated a fraught political landscape of entrenched intermediate groupings to achieve their goals (e.g. Angelback & Grier 2012). Integrative ceremonies, public works, redistribution of wealth and monumental building projects were among the mechanisms used to enlist a broader coalition and extend authority (e.g.…”

A Social Network Analysis of Traditional Labrets and Horizontal Relationships in the Salish Sea Region of Northwestern North America

“…Researchers continue to challenge past narratives that argue cultural complexity increased with growth, elaboration, and specialization of subsistence economies through time (e.g., Bilton 2014;Bovy 2005;Butler and Campbell 2004;Campbell and Butler 2010;Daniels 2009;Deur and Turner 2005;Orchard 2007;Orchard and Clark 2006;McKechnie 2014;Monks and Orchard 2011;Moss 2011;Moss and Cannon 2011). Archaeological evidence suggests that the Salish Sea is a mosaic of complex relationships where the increased utilization and diversification of resources profoundly patterned the historical trajectories of Coast Salish groups (e.g., Angelbeck 2009;Angelbeck and Grier 2012;Cannon 2002;Grier 2003;Martindale and Letham 2011).…”