The essays in this volume were originally presented at a 1987 seminar, sponsored by the School of American Research, that focused on the role of ideology in the rise of New World civilizations. In seven core chapters, archaeologists involved with large field projects assess the importance of ideological factors for understanding the Olmecs (David C. Grove and Susan D. Gillespie), Teotihuacan (George L. Cowgill), and the Maya (David A. Freidel, Arthur A. Demarest) in Mesoamerica; Tiwanaku (Alan L. Kolata), the Santa Valley (David J. Wilson), and the Incas (Geoffrey W. Conrad) in the Andes. Demarest also provides an introduction, along with commentaries by Robert L. Carneiro and Robert McC. Adams.
Some of these authors are more interested in data, others in theory; but all are concerned with relating ideological phenomena to political, economic, and ecological factors. The mix is open-minded and eclectic, for the seminar employed no common working definitions. Conceptions of ideology run the gamut from “the interconnected, fundamental ideas held by the elite and commoners alike about the order of the cosmos and everything it contains” (Freidel, p. 116) to “political ideas in action” (Kolata, quoting Friedrich, p. 70). Surprisingly, only one author (Kolata) pursues a neo-Marxist argument; and the Gramscian concept of hegemony, so fashionable of late in cultural anthropology, is nowhere mentioned.
This book is a good illustration of how far American archaeology has traveled since the days when it confidently proclaimed unitary theories—most of them highly materialistic—of state origins and the evolution of complex societies. While the contributors agree that ideologies must be taken into account in discussions of cultural causality, they are unsure how to go about it. Instead of invoking the evolutionary “prime movers” of yesteryear (Cameiro’s commentary excepted), they are now more likely to offer views such as Cowgill’s that the rise of the city of Teotihuacan in central Mexico was “due to some combination of commercial success, military prowess, strong leadership, a good location, luck, and some special religious appeal” (p. 96).
Overtones of the age-old materialist-idealist debate in anthropology occasionally surface in these essays, but none of the authors adopts an extreme position, and none sees ideology, however defined, as the dominant force in cultural change. In general, the tone is exploratory and tentative, so much so that Adams is compelled to chastise his colleagues for failing to address the important question of when and how coercive political elites appeared. As Demarest notes in the introduction, these essays are “a microcosm of the theoretical turmoil in contemporary archaeology” (p. 13).
