Abstract
In this paper, I ask why the insights of classical (i.e., materialist) Marxism are not more commonly used by archaeologists of recent academic generations. With evidence from the Soconusco region of Mexico, I explore the relationship between the economic base and political superstructure of the region’s inhabitants as well as evidence for the transformation from a kin-ordered to a tributary mode of production. Major esthetic and political transformations occurred across the region when naturalistic standards were replaced by abstract Olmec-style representation beginning approximately 1,400 cal. B.C. In contrast, macrobotanical, ground stone, and faunal patterns from the site of Cuauhtémoc (along with patterns from across the Soconusco) indicated that a major transformation of the economy occurred during the Conchas phase (1,000–850 cal. B.C.). Along with the marked intensification of subsistence production, the Conchas phase was also when the first system of conical mounds were built at the top three tiers of political centers in the Soconusco. I argue that the use of modes of production holds unrealized potential for a materialist interpretation of the past and that the development of a tributary mode of production helps explain the changes in the Soconusco after 1,000 cal. B.C.
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Notes
Classical Marxism has also been advocated by some archaeologists in the Spanish-speaking world over the past few decades (e.g., Bate 1977, 1998; Rolland 2005 and see Benavidas 2001; Politis 2003). However, this work is generally only cited by like-minded Anglo-American scholars (e.g., Chapman 2003: 19–20; McGuire 1992: 67–69; McGuire et al. 2005: 360–362; Trigger 2006: 496) and has had little impact on the Anglophone mainstream.
I use the term Olmec to refer to an art style. This style is comprised of artistic conventions and a limited set of readily identifiable motifs that form a coherent subject matter expressed at various levels of abstraction (Lesure 2004: 74–75). In this paper, I steer clear of the contentious Mother vs. Sister Culture argument and the role this art style played in the development of Mesoamerican civilization (see Blomster et al. 2005; Clark 1997; Flannery and Marcus 2000; Flannery et al. 2005; Neff et al. 2006b). However, I do discuss this debate at length elsewhere (Rosenswig 2010, in particular see pages 297–313).
The terms “true” and “false” describe motivation or understanding in the same sense as consciousness is described as true or false in the Marxist tradition (Marx and Engels 1976 [1845–1846]; and see Trigger 1993: 164–165, 181). While the term can be off-putting to some, false consciousness need not imply a conspiratorial plot and many of those who espouse (and benefit from the acceptance of) false consciousness may themselves be ardent believers. Likewise, those that act in contrast to their class interests are not automatons or dupes (Scott 1990)—they are simply socialized into cultures where vested interests are able to define cultural concepts and set limits on the range of discourse (Wolf 1999: 32–33). In modern politics, this is akin to framing the debate by setting the terms through which disagreements are argued. Hodder and Hutson (2003: 84) raise a valid critique that: “To take the position that Marxism offers the one true science that can identify objective reality is simply to state a belief.” Contrary to the relativism of many in the academy these days, I do not find this problematic (and see Gilman 1989: 7071; Leone 2007: 205). Neither the idealist nor the materialist “modes of explanation” is likely to convince the other of their beliefs as to how the world works (Trigger 2006: 34). To adopt the idealist position that a full understanding of society can be achieved by remaining within the minds of individual human actors is also simply a belief, and an anthropocentric one at that!
In contrast to the flood of employment when processual archaeology was ascending, by the time post-processual students entered the academic job market in the 1980s, the relative number of jobs was decreasing (Randal McGuire, personal communication).
The term historical materialism more comfortably incorporates the contributions of Engels to the Marxist program. It also emphasizes the materialist nature of these ideas in contrast to the idealist versions of neo-Marxism (sensu Trigger 1993: 171–181). The idealist reinterpretations of Marxism by the Frankfurt School and structural Marxists are problematic as Trigger (2006: 444–449) outlines. Without a materialist grounding in economic interests, insights into the political organization and the source of social change are diminished. Trigger (1993:186) once went so far as to question whether advocates of an idealist position could justifiably even label themselves Marxists.
If my position represents a “vulgar” materialism (sensu Friedman 1974), then so be it. The untenable alternative is to pluck the human species from nature to operate in an isolated cerebral plane of existence.
While it is quite possible that dietary changes and a reorganization of the mode of production were already well underway during the preceding Jocotal phase at the site of Ojo de Agua, this site and its subsidiary centers are not yet understood. The changes discussed for the La Blanca polity may therefore trace their origin to Ojo de Agua. However, regardless of what the evidence from the Ojo de Agua polity may eventually tell us, a distinctly new form of political and economic organization began with the La Blanca polity during the Conchas phase.
Again, it is possible that this economic transformation, the metabolic rift in Marx’s terms, was already well underway by the Jocotal phase. Evidence may document this at some point in the future. However, based on the current state of our knowledge (particularly those data from Cuauhtémoc), all lines of evidence indicate that the Jocotal–Conchas transition was the time of most dramatic change in both diet and political organization of the Soconusco’s inhabitants.
One of the most significant differences between Bourdieu and Giddens is that the former embraces the Marxist tradition whereas the latter rejects it and fits more comfortably in the Weberian tradition. Hodder and Hutson’s (2003: Chapter 5) lumping of these authors into a single perspective (and short chapter) thus muddies the theoretical water as they go to lengths to reject Marxism, even in its structural and idealist variants (see Hodder and Hutson 2003: Chapter 4). To divorce Marx from Bourdieu misses the point.
A proposal by Joyce and Lopiparo (2005; and see Patterson 2005: 373)—to take the balance between agency and structure as a changing relationship to be empirically documented—seems to be a productive approach. This is also more in keeping with the point of both habitus and structuration, that is, the agency is not to be reified but explained within the confines of custom and tradition. But, this is simply the Marxist concept of history that neither Bourdieu nor Giddens has really improved upon (see also Arnold 2000: 17).
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Acknowledgements
The data summarized here are derived from fieldwork conducted under a series of permits issued by Mexico’s Consejo de Arqueologia. Excavations and analyses were generously funded by the Albers Fund, Department of Anthropology, Yale University, the Yale Council of International and Area Studies, the New World Archaeological Foundation, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies as well as by Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship. Most of these data have been presented at the 2005 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas in Guatemala City, the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, and the 2009 International Congress of Americanists in Mexico City. My thanks to James Collins, Richard Lesure, and Michael Love for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Constructive suggestions by three reviewers (Randall McGuire and two who remained anonymous) strengthened this paper on both empirical and theoretical grounds. I dedicate this paper to the late Bruce Trigger who introduced me to the use of historical materialism in archaeology while I was an undergraduate at McGill University in the early 1990s and to my ancestors—members of The Party in the 1930s and 1940s through whom a materialist understanding of politics forms part of my “doxa”.
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Rosenswig, R.M. Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico. J Archaeol Method Theory 19, 1–48 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-010-9101-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-010-9101-0