Ancient States and Ordinary People: A Feminist Re-Imagining of Ancient Maya Power and the Everyday.

Article Ancient states and ordinary people: A feminist re-imagining of ancient Maya power and the everyday Critique of Anthropology 2016, Vol. 36(2) 103–121 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0308275X15614632 coa.sagepub.com Chelsea Blackmore University of California, Santa Cruz, USA Abstract Maya archaeology continues to be defined by a schism between ‘politic/s and state’ and ‘everyday life and ordinary people.’ Using feminist theory, this paper deconstructs this dichotomy by considering the intellectual history and theoretical perspectives that continue to reify these boundaries and its connections to modern neoliberal discourses. How we conceive of the state – of what it is, and how it interacts with the rest of society – is at the heart of neo-evolutionary models of state formation; these impact our understanding of how ancient Maya society operated and the ways in which power, politics and class function. Archaeological fascination with elites and rulers, both in scholarly and public circles, creates a narrative focused on individual achievement, and a quest for wealth and material access; values lauded by the neoliberal state. Alternative readings of complexity illustrate that everyday life of ordinary people is nuanced, intentional, and inherently political. Such work forces us to reconsider this dichotomy and recognize it as a dialectical and mutually constitutive process. Keywords Feminism, archaeology of complexity, ancient Maya, states, power, neo-evolutionary theory Within Maya archaeology, as elsewhere, feminist and poststructuralist approaches to settlement patterns and household studies have challenged the normalization of androcentric and heteronormative methodologies and complicated our understanding of ancient human practices. Yet pursuit of these topics in Maya Corresponding author: Chelsea Blackmore, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. Email: cblackmo@ucsc.edu Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 104 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) archaeology continue to be intellectually and materially separated from consistently ‘more important’ discussions of the state, elite ideology, and politicoeconomic process – discussions that often privilege neo-evolutionary adaptive processes and focus on the elite to the near exclusion of all others. This is what Robin and her colleagues (2010: 316) define as the schism between ‘politic/s and state’ and ‘everyday life and ordinary people.’ Given the extensive conversations and critiques that have attempted to redress this issue, why does it persist? The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct this dichotomy by considering the intellectual history and theoretical perspectives that continue to reify these boundaries and its connections to modern neoliberal discourses. Archaeological examinations of complexity focus on the lives of the elite, the construction and control of political economies, and what are seen as the broad processes related to social, economic and political organization. These foci mirror neoliberal concerns of the modern state, creating narratives that emphasize technological innovation and individual achievements at the expense of everyday life and the complex systems that characterize it. Alternative readings of complexity force us to reconsider this dichotomy and recognize it as dialectical and mutually constituted. Archaeology, as any discipline, is situated and shaped by modern political processes (see Patterson, 1999). Just as capitalist discourses today emphasize technology, urban development and individual success as central to social progress, complexity narratives in archaeology position the state (or at least a particular conception of it) and political elites in the foreground. Everyday activities, particularly of lower status peoples and communities, are eclipsed, virtually erased from discussions about state formation, political economy, and social and economic development. For Maya archaeology, how we conceive of the state – of what it is, and how it interacts with the rest of society – is at the heart of neo-evolutionary models of state formation; these impact our understanding of how ancient Maya society arose and operated. Neo-evolutionary models of the state not only separate it from everyday life materially and spatially but also sustain assumptions that the state shapes everyday life while everyday life has little impact on the state. This creates a vicious circularity in which archaeological research, the questions asked, and the interpretations that are made remain hinged on presumably commonsensical definitions of the state and its organization (Wylie, 2002). Moreover these discussions reinforce the hegemony of modern neoliberalism and the superiority of western capitalist modes of production. The past is constructed in the image of the present. Neo-evolutionary theory, neo-liberalism and the ancient state Neo-evolutionary theory emerged in the 20th century as an attempt to reimagine the connections between Darwinian evolution and social change by focusing on the specific, albeit patterned, systems of directional movement towards complexity (e.g. Sahlins and Service, 1960). According to Marcus (2008: 254; see also Marcus and Flannery, 1996), cultural evolutionary theory should be presented as a ‘kind of Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 105 Blackmore ‘‘evolution without stages’’ – a history of change in which emerging social and political institutions, rather than stages, provided the milestones.’ Despite its attempt to avoid universalizing categories, cultural evolutionary theory privileges shifts towards complexity, or increasing social and political differentiation, as the mark of ‘true’ civilizations (Chapman, 2003; Trigger, 2003). By the 1970s and 1980s, processual archaeologists were deeply invested in discussions around the formation and maintenance of complex societies (Patterson, 1999). At the same time, feminist, Marxist, and postprocessual scholars were increasingly vocal in their critique of processual and ecosystem theories as environmentally deterministic and deficient in its consideration of human agency, gender, and class (e.g. Brumfiel, 1980, 1992; Conkey and Gero, 1997; Gailey and Patterson, 1988; Hodder, 1982; McGuire, 1992). More recently, the utilization of practice theory, agent-centered models, and discussions of embodiment and personhood have redirected archaeological discussions away from top-down frameworks to an examination of the past as multivocal and often downright messy (Dobres and Robb, 2000; Joyce and Meskell, 2003; Pyburn, 2004; Robin, 2012; Voss, 2008). ‘Everyday life’, in particular, considers how quotidian practices, households and even lower status peoples play a central role in the formation of society. Settlement pattern studies, for example, redefined how archaeologists examined ancient traditions, by including non-elite structures and areas outside of the site core (Ashmore, 1981; Vogt and Leventhal, 1983; Willey, 1965). Later foci on households, gender and landscapes moved previously depersonalized representations of the past to ones that highlighted the diversity and complexity of everyday life, both in its focus on what people did to the recursive and contested relationships between people and the world they inhabited (e.g. Ashmore and Knapp, 1999; Wilk and Ashmore, 1988; Wilk and Rathje, 1982). Evolutionary models of cultural change, much like the ideas associated with states and complex societies discussed previously are considered antiquated in many archaeological circles. But as Pyburn (2004: 9) argues: In many circles such terms as civilization, states, collapse and complex society are passé and refer to conceptions that are not so much unsupportable as uninteresting . . . [S]uch models are unsupportable in their own terms: they do not meet the standards of evidence a positivistic stance requires . . . [I]n order to forge new models and make new discoveries about the past, it will be necessary to take apart the old categories and arguments of cultural evolutionism. Neo-evolutionary approaches continue to be entrenched in how we conceive of the state – what it is, and how it interacts with the rest of society. Just because we do not talk about origins of civilizations or state formation with the same level of interest as we once did does not mean that these frameworks have been thoroughly dismantled. The problem has not been solved. Going back to this idea of a division between ‘politic/s and state’ and ‘everyday life and ordinary people’ (e.g. Robin et al., 2010), I argue that it is a division between politics, the state and the everyday Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 106 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) OF ordinary people. Although everyday practices transcend class boundaries and frameworks of power, they have become the theoretical straight-jackets worn by the lower classes; the very thing which continues to divide them from the state and those defined as being in charge of it. The everyday life of ordinary people continues, even with considerable evidence to the contrary, to be framed as apolitical and independent of supposed real systems of power that define state organization. The division between the state and everyday peoples persists because we continue to link the state and complexity, even tacitly, with the upper classes. How we construct the past is implicated by who constructs it and why. As Joyce (2008) argues, archaeological interpretations are tied directly to modern (and historical) concerns with nationalism, tourism, capitalist development, and globalization. In 19th century Honduras, for example, the site of Copan became a ‘‘potent symbol’’ of mayanization and the basis for a new national identity (Joyce, 2008: 58; see also Euraque, 1998). As a result, archaeological sites became a focus of government intervention. The ancient Maya became folded into the fabric of a mythic ancestry, one that valorized the technological and social superiority of a collapsed cultural experiment. By ‘‘saving’’ and reconstructing ancient sites like Copan, the Honduran state became the savior of a disappearing/disappeared past. Because Honduras was on the periphery of the Maya world, mayanization completely eclipsed other forms of indigeneity that existed. Major sites, monumental architecture and art became the focus of government intervention. Local variability or unique cultural formations were subsumed under dominant interpretations that privileged how more politically and socially complex Mesoamerican societies shaped the region (Joyce and Henderson, 2001). These views of the state, complexity, and the role of ordinary people in politics support both the ideology of neoliberalism and its real world consequences. Harvey (2005: 5) defines neoliberalism as political economic practices that privilege capitalism and the individual entrepreneur. Emerging in the 1970s, neoliberal politicians in the United States initiated campaigns of government deregulation, privatization, and state withdrawal from social safety nets. They argued that this created greater investment opportunities for businesses, injecting money and resources into local and national systems; resources from which any hard working, motivated individuals could benefit; failure was a result of personal shortcomings. Proponents of neoliberalism defined the free market as an essential right and freedom, codifying it as a necessary component of any civilized democracy. Neoliberal assumptions about the relationship between class and character have become a hegemonic discourse and set of institutional practices that shape how people perceive the world (Harvey, 2005: 3; Harzfeld, 2010). The capitalist democratic state becomes the pinnacle of social evolution, demarcated from ancient states and other forms of socio-political organization. Thus, it makes ‘sense’ that ordinary people in the past were segregated from state politics and power, as the modern state is unique in people’s access and liberties. It is only through capitalist access that individuals from any walk of life can succeed. Access to a free market overrides the structural inequalities that existed in the past and presumably those Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 107 Blackmore that exist today. Moreover, neoliberalism rests on a particular ideology of individualism, further exacerbated by the protestant work ethic (Weber, 1930). As Harvey (2005: 65) notes ‘‘While personal and individual freedom in the marketplace is guaranteed, each individual is held responsible and accountable for his or her own actions and wellbeing . . ..Individual success or failure are interpreted in terms of entrepreneurial virtues or personal failings rather than being attributed to any systematic property.’’ The capitalist/neoliberal state places responsibility on the individual while arguing that the freedom of the modern state allows for individual success. Archaeologists, consciously or unconsciously, underwrite these neoliberal frameworks by creating an ancient Maya history that at once resonates with these beliefs while reaffirming capitalism as the pinnacle of social evolution. Our overriding fascination with elites and rulers, both in scholarly and public circles, creates a narrative focused on individual achievement and the quest for wealth and material access; values lauded by a neoliberal state. Elites and their daily lives are inherently defined by choice and intentionality. The power of elites and rulers to define what the state is and how it functions, even though they may be constrained by social organization, is determined by the choice of specific individuals. They become the focal points around which ancient Maya history revolves. Without careful analysis and use, agency easily resurrects neoclassical Hobbesian notion of the rational, economic man: ‘In short, choice is equated with autonomy, which yields the undetermined individual’ (Patterson, 2005: 374). At the same time, archaeological narratives of the lower classes inadvertently assert the superiority of the capitalist state. Ordinary people were constrained by their social class, unable to participate or succeed in society; the modern state becomes the very apex of moral order, access, and potential in comparison. Those living in the peripheries are the unnamed and invisible; either living under the guise of the state or outside of it, much in the same way that modern neoliberal policies create barriers that keep the poor from participating in the state (Goode and Maskovsky, 2002). Feminist critique of the ancient Maya state and the role of households The ancient Maya, who occupied southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras and El Salvador prior to 16th century European invasion, were a highly stratified agricultural society. They along with other Mesoamerican peoples shared numerous cultural traits including hieroglyphic writing, a calendar system, bark-paper books known as codices, and the process of nixtamal (the adding of lime to boiled maize). Archaeology of the Maya continues to fascinate the public at large, fueling research at a pace that is largely unprecedented elsewhere in the world. As a result, archaeologists have the ability to talk about the past in very nuanced and textured ways, a call that has time and again been voiced by those of us interested in issues such as households, communities, landscapes, gender, and identity. Yet, as noted above, these topics – often glossed as everyday life or Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 108 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) ordinary people – continue to be intellectually and materially divided from what are conceived of as more important discussions of the state, political action, elite ideology, and economic process. Questions about socio-political organization and economic structure have long been at the center of archaeological examinations into ancient Maya society. The state, specifically in how it functions and the kind of power it possesses, has been the focus of some of the most vociferous debates by scholars. Iannone (2002) notes that these discussions led to a rigid, essentializing dichotomy between centralization and decentralization. Recognizing that Maya prehistory oscillated between these two forms, Marcus (1998; see also Willey, 1986) proposed the ‘dynamic model’. These peaks and valleys refer generally to the number of administrative units or decision making levels within a society; in other words discernable levels of social hierarchy. Centralization refers then to its peak, when the state asserts the greatest amount of control over its population, particularly those living in the hinterlands. Decentralization, on the other hand, refers to loss of economic control by leaders, focusing instead on the primacy of kinship and religion to extract goods from their followers (specifically lower status peoples). The reasons given for these oscillations vary, including the ability or inability of elites and rulers to maintain control over subordinates (Marcus and Feinman, 1998), the natural difficulty in maintaining inegalitarian structures over long periods of time (Marcus, 1998), and the tension between kinship and kingship (Gailey, 1987; Iannone, 2002; McAnany, 1995). Halperin (2007) argues that while these definitions focus on class relations, they also establish elites as the prime movers in these social relationships in which power moves in one direction-downward. Households and the state Households are not only seen as the places of everyday life but also as a microcosm of the state and society of which they are a part; everyday practices become the lens through which we can see these interactions. Household studies are important for defining the kind of states that existed through their integration (evidence of centralization) or autonomy (evidence of decentralization) from the state. For example, how were households tied to the fate of centers? Did they persist after the collapse or abandonment of these places? Did people in peripheral communities depend on centralized markets or did they utilize local craft production to meet daily needs? These questions demonstrate how people and communities were agents capable of self-government and control over their lives. While autonomy may give households and lower status people’s power over their own lives, it also excludes them from being involved or having much of an effect on larger sociopolitical structures. The predominance of an either-or conception of integration and autonomy shows the extent to which neo-evolutionary models continue to underwrite how we approach state and class formation. Thought to have been put down by our interrogations and deconstructions of gender, bodies, and identity, neo-evolutionary theory continues in most sectors to define what, or more Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 109 Blackmore specifically, who, the state is, how it arises, and the role that the state and its elite play in the control and development of complex society. Specifically, we assume that social and political organizations are the logical outcome of increasing social complexity, reminiscent of the evolutionary explanations of Herbert Spencer (1974) and Emile Durkheim (1964). Heterogeneity in complex societies like the Maya becomes a natural process of social evolution (e.g. Chase and Chase, 1992; Chase et al., 2002; Freidel, 1992; Pendergast, 1992). As populations increase in size, the division of labor becomes differentiated and as they become differentiated, they became interdependent. And the motor behind this change and this differentiation becomes linked to the city, the elite and the state (Patterson, 1999: 40). By equating internal differentiation with the efficient establishment of administrative hierarchies, archaeologists inadvertently conflate the technical division of labor (i.e. different jobs) with a social division of labor (i.e. class)-power and class. While these viewpoints are important for defining the interaction and relationships between different classes, they establish a contractual and reciprocal relationship that may inadvertently smooth over actual class conflict or intraclass differences, and even the ability of lower status peoples and communities to be an actual part of the state (e.g. Blackmore, 2008, 2011). Agency is possible but is reduced to those individuals who choose to take power and those who choose to serve. Thus, agency pushes at the limits of structure when we speak of elites and rulers, but is weak and constrained when dealing with the lower classes. Neither incorporation and autonomy or centralization and decentralization provide a space for considering how lower status populations shape the state, let alone how they are often a central component to the state making process itself. What we continue to recreate with these models is a class based version of the public and private divide. Ethnography, particularly archaeology’s application of it, has played a major role in this. Although critical as a source of analogy, its application has been broadly described as tyrannical (re: Wobst, 1978). While not wanting to throw the ‘‘baby’’ out with the methodological bathwater, we must be cognizant of the issues present in ethnographic analogy: 1. Descriptions of modern and historical actions are perceived through particular cultural biases that may unintentionally exclude or misrepresent actual human behavior (Hendon, 1996; Pyburn, 2004), 2. Historical processes are collapsed thereby erasing cultural change and nuance (Brumfiel, 1992; Brumfiel and Robin, 2008; Robin, 2002; Pyburn, 2008); and 3. This reinforces essentialized characterizations of social categories such as gender, class, ethnicity, and status (Robin, 2013; Trigger, 1980). How we view the ancient Maya state is shaped by our ethnographic present. Neo-liberalism locates progress in the wealthy and technologically advanced sectors of society. Rural areas and impoverished peoples are placed at the edges of these processes, if not outside them altogether. Rural areas are defined as conservative and slow to change while the poor are marked as undisciplined, incapable of taking advantage of the freedoms provided by the modern capitalist state. Thus emphasis of the modern state is on the wealthy, the technological sophisticated centers, and political elites who are seen as the motors of change and hallmarks of progress. Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 110 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) Similarly, neo-evolutionary theory marks the political elites and their practices as central to the formation and maintenance of complexity. The state, past or present, is seen as an outgrowth of a few unique, self-assured individuals. The rest of society simply adapts. Public/private divide and the role of power Feminists (Ortner, 1974; Rapp, 1979; Rosaldo, 1974) have long criticized the public/private divide which has accorded male and female activities to specific spheres. The public/private dichotomy connects gender with aspects of nature and culture (e.g. Ortner, 1974): ‘it provides a way of linking the cultural valuations given to the category ‘woman’ to the organization of women’s activities in society . . . ultimately derived from woman’s role as mother and rearer of children’ (Moore, 1988: 21). Men, in contrast, are linked to the civic and cultural spheres of society. They emerge from a ‘state of nature’ bearing responsibility for the public while also shaping the private (Brown, 2006). When compared to men’s responsibilities, women’s activities become considerably undervalued in these frameworks. In the analysis of complex societies, this divide between civil society and the private is not only gendered but class based. Much as the neoliberal household is the depoliticized site of personal affairs separate from (and certainly not the responsibility of) the state, so are the households of lower status peoples in our accounts of the ancient Maya wholly removed from the operation of power. The machinations of the everyday are seen as removed and apart from civil society. Who has access to civil society and who does not, not only rests on preconceived notions of gender but broadly what power is and who wields it; a conflation of power and class positionality: The point here is that the conflation of power and class in archaeological theory potentially limits our understanding of the character and variety of the social distinctions and identities created by different political economies. It hamstrings our ability to imagine ways that individuals could be conflicted by multiple positions and identities. This in turn limits possibilities for theorizing the dynamics of change. To understand variety in social life and its transformative tensions, we need to distinguish, as Marx did, an individual’s position in class relations of surplus flow from their position in a host of non-class flows of power, property and meaning. (Saitta, 2005: 27–28) Thus, current models of the ancient Maya state and its socio-political organization uncritically collapse power and class together. Traditionally, power and politics have been viewed as an outcome of the political economy – more specifically how luxury goods, mass production, long-distance trade, and particular technologies (i.e. ceramics) secure elite power and establish social affiliations among and between polity centers (e.g. the state). As discussed previously, these are central to archaeological determinations of how states function. Whether we speak of Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 111 Blackmore economic or ideological power, both of these give validation to claims of superior social standing; in effect naturalizing hierarchy so that power and control over civil society becomes apriori. Studies of political economy are inherently class biased (for exceptions see Brumfiel, 1987, 1992; Halperin, 2007; Lohse, 2013; Pyburn, 1998). Taking Saitta’s critique one step further, certain groups of people in ancient states are inherently seen as powerless and to some extent living outside of the state. People living in the lower stratums of society (and their everyday lives and activities) do not have any ‘real’ power. When we give everyday actions and ordinary people power, we identify it as a mechanism of community agency and local organization; not in terms of a real connection to the space and place of real power (as in site centers and political economies). When a commoner does exercise ‘power’ it is a process that is either constrained by or a reaction to the state. Moreover, we tend to look for these exceptions of power and politics in the materials and practices that resonate with elite political power such as monumentality, access to prestige goods, and wealth. These models do not allow for lower status peoples, households (unless upper class ones) or the everyday to be part of the state, let alone have an impact on its development. Power is conflated with the state, the state with the upper classes, monumental architecture, and urban development while powerlessness becomes equated to the everyday, the mundane, the rural and the lower classes. Although substantial evidence contradicts this (e.g. Ashmore et al., 2004; Iannone and Connell, 2003; Gonlin, 1994; Hendon, 2010; Lohse and Valdez, 2004; Robin, 1999, 2012), we continue to uncritically reproduce these assumptions because we have not thoroughly unpacked the presumptions both in how states work and the methodologies we use to think about political organization: ‘Western tradition of political analysis places excessive emphasis on the state and on formal political institutions of the government. That understanding power relations in society involves more than an understanding of the formal institutions of the state is a point that some theorists outside the anthropological tradition, notably Antonio Gramsci, argued long ago’ (Gledhill, 2000: 20). The autonomy of the ‘political’ in any society (Western or otherwise) creates a mythology around the structure of power so social foundations of how states operate become obscured (Gledhill, 2000). This class based division between the public and the private is unfortunately reified by how we approach settlement hierarchies and the everyday. The integration or autonomy of households is underwritten by settlement hierarchies; a heuristic device commonly used by archaeologists to identify potential systems of hierarchal organization and the likely interactions and relationships between communities of people. Monumental architecture and their distribution across the landscape become a gloss for political activity and membership in a single social stratum of society without taking into account the spatial significance and complexity of smaller scale sites and/or smaller scale everyday practices of ordinary people WITHIN monumental architecture. Buildings become vectors of social action which in and of itself is not problematic. Settlement analysis has provided Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 112 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) archaeologists the intellectual and methodological tools to consider culture at regional and individualistic scales. But when we see social action, particularly overt forms of political action (e.g. public, civil society) being defined by the monumental then we tacitly discount the actions of the unseen, the unknown and the non-monumental (as with the problem of invisible structures e.g. Ashmore, 2007; Pyburn, 1990). Everything else by measure becomes redundant, inadequate or mundane. Particular households (re: lower status households) are kept apart from the state, as the ‘state’ is placed in the temples, palaces (a household but a specialized one), administrative buildings, and elite houses. Yet while these places are a focus of elite and royal authority, competition, and alliance-building, lower status households are where the everyday practices not just of life but of politics are carried out. By constructing a model in which we talk about the relationship between household and state in terms of autonomy and integration creates an ontological model and geographic construct that defines space and our categories in particular ways. Lower status households, everyday peoples and their practices are placed outside of the political practices that define the state. By arguing that monumental structures were extremely meaningful to communities and not just the elite is no different than saying that commoners were hoodwinked. Essentially this reifies long held neo-evolutionary models of contractual formations of social hierarchy (see also Blackmore, 2011). People give up power or accept inequality in order to share in the fruits of a better and more organized society. Thus class positionality becomes associated with one’s location in the political network. Alternative readings of power and complexity Preconceived notions that separate everyday life of ordinary people from the state tend to equate domestic relations to folk concepts of domesticity and therefore irrelevant to politics, surplus production and social differentiation (Hendon, 1996). As discussed previously, such definitions of the household and domestic relations are defined as private and therefore separate from the public affairs of the state, of men and of the elite. But as feminist critiques have demonstrated, these are not universal, meaningful, or separable categories (Brumfiel and Robin, 2008; Joyce, 1992; Moore, 1988; Pyburn, 2004; Robin, 2002; Wylie, 1992). Alternative readings of complexity view households and social actors in four distinct but interrelated ways: 1. Domestic groups and households are composed of a wide array of social actors whose agendas and interests may not always align (see Hendon, 1996); 2. Non-elite households participate in local and ‘‘global’’ networks of economic and social exchange; 3. Non-elite populations are inherently political; and 4. Everyday life is a microcosm of political and social intentionality. Choices from where to live to the location and practice of ritual reflect that non-elites and everyday acts are active forces in state-making. Political power is often linked to the control and management of ideologically potent materials and long distance trade items. They are the basis of a political Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 113 Blackmore economy used by elites to legitimate their positions within and between communities. Elites have a vested interest in the economic production and circulation of these goods (Lohse, 2013). Commoner economic roles are limited (presumably) to staple goods and utilitarian production, rarely considered important to the political machinations of elites and polities. But as Lohse (2013: 3) argues, political stability necessitates social and economic interaction at all levels. At the site of Cancuén for instance, non-elite producers appear to have controlled aspects of the prestige economy (Kovacevich, 2007). Jade production, at least in its initial stages, is neither centralized nor found within elite precincts. Kovacevich (2007) argues that this created new social and economic opportunities for commoners. Although elites controlled the final product and perceived ritual knowledge associated with it, commoner control over the initial stages of production meant that non-elites impacted Cancuén’s political economy and by association the strategies of power central to the state. Brumfiel (2009) similarly challenges whether or not Aztec commoners were mere pawns of an expansionist state. Did ordinary people benefit from the rise of Aztec hegemony? Were commoners a source of innovation or were administrators, priests and artisans the source of all inspiration? While the Aztecs were largely exploitative, Brumfiel (2009) argues that this varied from place to place. It was not a process of simple one way acculturation but rather one that required Aztec elites to adopt strategies based on specific situations. At Xaltocan, for example, residents developed technologies, artistic expressions and ritual practices appropriated by Aztec elite. During the Classic Period, Maya polities appear to have varying degrees of control over peripheral communities. In such cases, choices of affiliation made by non-elites appear to have even greater impact on state strategies as well as the long term success and expansion of local centers. The site of Chan, Belize, an ancient agrarian village appears, at first blush to be tied to the fortunes of Xunantunich, a minor center located 4 km to the northwest (Robin et al., 2005). As Xunantunich came to power in the Late, Late Classic (AD 700/780-900), Chan’s population doubles in size, reflected in increased investment in household and terrace construction throughout the site. At the same time, a new ceramic complex, Mount Maloney Black, was introduced (Kosakowsky, 2012). Such assemblages became common features in Upper Belize Valley archaeological sites, argued to be indicators of affiliation with Xunantunich (Connell, 2003). Red-slipped wares had been dominant prior to this, though sites such as Pacbitun to the east continued to use these types well into the Terminal Classic. Although Mount Maloney makes up the majority of ceramics identified at Chan, there are distinct variations between how they were used and by whom. Residences founded prior to the Late, Late Classic period had considerably higher percentages of red-slipped wares in comparison to those who arrived after 700 AD. As well, Chan had considerably smaller percentages, approximately 70 percent fewer Mount Maloney vessels when compared with assemblages at Xunantunich. Equally significant, Mount Maloney vessels were rarely encountered in ceremonial contexts at Chan’s community center or in ritual deposits of both long-standing and new residents (Kosakowsky, 2012). Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 114 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) While Chan residents signified their affiliation with Xunantunich through the use of black-slipped ceramics, they appear to have maintained relationships with other polities. Moreover, Chan residents were far from uniform in their choices, with some appearing to have closer ties with local elites and others investing in social and economic relationships farther afield (see Blackmore, 2011). Choices of non-elite have the potential to affect not only state strategies but lead to the success or failure of local polities. In their examination of the relationship between population fluctuations among peripheral communities near the larger center of Xunantunich, Belize, Ashmore et al. (2004) note that local populations decreased at the same time as the center’s power began to wane (A.D. 800–900). Traditional interpretations of state formation often linked such decline as an indicator of state control and regional integration. Instead, the authors (Ashmore et al., 2004) suggest that this decline may have been an intentional act of people ‘voting with their feet’. In the Late and Terminal Classic periods (AD 600–900), new urban centers were springing up. Competition between centers would have impacted those living in the hinterlands as tribute demands likely increased. In such cases, non-elite peoples may have left the area because of their dissatisfaction with local conditions. The political is personal One of the simplest and most disturbing feminist insights is that ‘the personal is political’. Disturbing because it means that relationships we once imagined were private or merely social are in fact infused with power, usually unequal power backed up by public authority . . . But the assertion . . . is like a palindrome, one of those phrases that can be read backward as well as forwards. Read as ‘the political is personal’, it suggests that politics is not shaped merely by what happens in legislative debates, voting booths or war rooms. (Enloe, 2000: 3) As Enloe (2000) suggests, the very notion of power needs to be radicalized to examine how the political is personal; that bureaucratic and administrative decisions and relationships are not simply built from political meetings or intrigues but are based on the personal relationships, friendships and connections developed through everyday acts and activities. For archaeology, this means that the ‘everyday is political’ and ordinary people are themselves inculcated into the political systems of society. As has been argued by numerous scholars (e.g. Abeles, 1991; Ong, 1987; Scott, 1985, 1990), political reality is multilayered and evident in the symbols, rituals and acts of everyday life. Power depends on the everyday social practices that manifest from the interactions between the governed and the government (Gledhill, 2000: 21). Everyday people and actions manifest themselves in unexpected ways into the political and social systems that define society, something that is missed when we focus on the visible events and rebellions that mark history (Scott, 1985). Whether it is foot dragging or work slowdowns, everyday actions by ordinary people mark out spaces of intentional resistance and action upon and within the state. When we focus on the overt political forms of power in ancient Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 115 Blackmore societies, whether that be the machinations of rulership, epigraphic texts, monumental construction, or ritual authority, we limit the kinds of questions we can ask about how politics and power are variably defined and the ways that ordinary life of everyday peoples can be intentional and political (Blackmore, 2011; Lohse and Gonlin, 2008). Even the production of state religion and ideology is reconstituted in everyday life. By drawing on the collective experiences on non-elite peoples and the community at large, rulers were able to naturalize their power and authority by framing their existence as essential to the practices of everyday life (Lucero, 2003). But people are not simply duped by the construction of imagined community or collective practice. Religion, ideology, and belief are in constant flux. As Scott (2009: 331) argues, states may be vast in their influence but they are also shallow. The disparate peoples of Zomia, for example, legitimate authority through a bricolage of ideas, customs, and ritual borrowed from the state it keeps at bay. These are not state ideologies writ small, but instead a process by which ‘cosmology, regalia, dress, architecture, and titles are rearranged and assembled into unique amalgams by prophets, healers, and ambitious chiefs’ (Scott, 2009: 331). These new formations become the basis for legitimatizing their autonomy from the state. Can Maya archaeologists imagine political intentionality for ordinary people that is distinct, part of, or even apart from the state? As demonstrated in the previous section, everyday life and the choices, intentional or otherwise of commoners need to occupy a central place in archaeological examinations of complexity, state formation, and political process. Conclusions Margaret Conkey (2005) notes that feminism in archaeology, like other critiques, has been concerned with extricating archaeology in two primary ways: 1. from an over exaggeration of the archaeological trace; and 2: from turning the abstract or the specific into something concrete. By focusing on the ambiguity and complexity of the archaeological record, we make apparent the invisible groups of people who make up the ancient Maya; but is this visibility an optical illusion? In the process of making the invisible visible do we end up creating new roles and identities that are simply an extension of the very problems we are critiquing? Sometimes the process of making something visible, as is the case in ‘giving’ lower status peoples agency, we have stopped short of asking why these systems of muting existed in the first place (Conkey, 2005: 20). Much as race in archaeology has taken on a subtle colorblindness (e.g. Battle-Baptiste, 2011), we continue to reinscribe our own version of class-blindness in Maya archaeology. Just as feminist critiques of past gender roles have noted how we create prehistoric fantasies that reflect a 1950s fantasy of ‘Father Knows Best’, similar structures may explain why we associate lower status peoples with powerlessness. Neoliberal policies about what states are and how they function and ideologies of class mobility place blame on those who experience poverty, arguing that they are principally to blame for their lot in life Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on May 22, 2016 116 Critique of Anthropology 36(2) (Banfield, 1992; Lewis, 1966; Rector, 2009). The pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ideology of American/Western individualism ignores the structural and institutional forces of inequality. Of course, the Maya were not a capitalist society and class was something ascribed and not achieved. But the conception of poverty, of those in the lower classes as an unfortunate but expected part of the modern world, mystifies the very process by which structures of inequality operate. Neo-evolutionary models of state and class formation do something quite similar – they assume that the very nature of the process is a universalizing project that is readily accepted and defined by everyone. It not only ignores the complexity that accompanies these formations but assumes, much like modern neoliberal agendas, that those at the bottom have no power nor should they. If we are going to remove these neoliberal assumptions then we need to ask what we as archaeologists gain in maintaining these hierarchies of knowledge? What does this do to our authority and legitimization as archaeologists? Could it be possible that our need to gloss over the process of social difference and inequality in the past is how we maintain our authority and our privilege in the present? If we don’t take a cue from other critical deconstructions of patriarchal, racist, and heterosexist assumptions that articulate how the past is impacted by the present, then neo-evolutionary and neoliberal models will continue to shape our research regardless of the theoretical trajectory we take. Given the nature of archaeological evidence as Joan Gero (2007) points out, more ambiguous then we commonly admit, defining the past in absolute terms should be flatly problematic from an archaeologist’s point of view. If we agree that the past must be understood as historical, as contextual, as complicated, then why do interpretations so rarely reflect what should be an interpretive mess? In Ancient Maya archaeology, discussions of state organization and formation have been replaced largely by questions of socio-political organization, political economic structures, and discussions of social complexity. The upshot to these characterizations is that we have moved beyond simplistic needs to debate whether the Maya are a state to questions of how social relationships and identities form within that state and change over time. Unfortunately, neo-evolutionary models while seemingly discredited have snuck their way into many of these discussion, cloaking reality in ‘taken-for granted’ notions about states, households, and people. Robin (2012) noted that investigations at rural farming communities, such as those at Chan, Belize force us to reevaluate binaries of the urban and rural and recognize instead that these spaces are part of a continuum. I argue that the data does considerably more when we alter the very notion of what we mean by complexity; what and who it entails; and moreover muddle the notions of politics, power, and the everyday. 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