Corporate and Network Political Strategies in the Evolution of Mississippian Societies

Corporate and Network Political Strategies in the Evolution of Mississippian Societies

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Archaeologists interested in the evolution of chiefdoms in late prehistoric North America have often argued in a bi-polar fashion, stressing either that inter-regional processes are key to understanding the political and demographic centralizations that took place or that intra-regional ones are. I suggest that it is more valuable to view inter- and intra-regional processes as varying in importance and impact through time. I further suggest that the model of dual political process (corporate and network) my colleagues and I outlined in a recent Current Anthropology article offers a useful framework for pursuing this perspective.

In 1990 I proposed that Mississippian societies, the major cultural group in the midcontinental and southeastern United States from about A.D. 900 to A.D. 1500, could be effectively understood as a prestige-good system. I argued that Mississippian societies evolved out of a corporate lineage structure in which elders controlled access to material objects used in rituals of social reproduction, goods I referred to as "prestige-goods". I argued, following Claude Meillassoux (1978), that political authority held by these elders was fundamentally rooted in their ability to control junior lineage members’ access to prestige-goods, in essence, controlling junior lineage members’ ability to marry, join associations, pay for parents’ funerary ceremonies, and the like. Political leaders thus became linked in a pan-Mississippian web of competition for access to prestige-goods. Those who maintained access flourished, those who could not waned.

What I think was most useful about this idea was that it shifted the prevailing theoretical focus in Mississippian research from the control of necessities for physical reproduction (for example, food, land, and water) as a basis of political authority to the control of necessities for social reproduction. It also challenged scholars to look at Mississippian societies not as isolated entities but as participants in a large system of interacting and interdependent polities. I do not want to suggest that I was alone in promoting these shifts. Indeed, I am indebted to James Brown, Christopher Peebles, and Paul Welch who preceded me in pursuing some of these ideas. I am also pleased to note that Adam King, Jennifer Freer, Mary Beth Trubitt, and Cameron Wesson, among others, continue to do innovative and enlightening work along similar lines.

But not all scholars accepted the idea of a Mississippian prestige-good system. Indeed, one group has flatly rejected this perspective as "inappropriate" (Pauketat 1997:11) and "exaggerationalist" (Muller 1997:346). These scholars argue that Mississippian polities were not as large or as complex as the prestige-good system model makes them out to be. Prestige-goods, they argue, were produced locally and consumed broadly--there was minimal foreign trade and little control over access to these goods. They admit that inter-regional trade did occur, as non-local materials are present on many Mississippian sites, but this trade was infrequent and relatively unimportant. I have given a lot of thought to what I should call this group of scholars (some of which I cannot repeat here). Ultimately I decided to name them by an accurate and unbiased acronym for what they are: Currently Unsophisticated Retro-Marxist Utterly Dogmatic Griffin-Emblazoned One-time Neofunctionalist School, or CURMUDGEONS. Now, to be fair, I also felt it necessary to develop an unbiased and accurate acronym for my group of scholars: Famously Lucent And Keenly Erudite School, or FLAKES.

I admit to you today that I am a flake. I also admit that the curmudgeons have a point: we flakes have overgeneralized a very complex political landscape. And yet I remain an unabashed flake. I still argue that a prestige-goods system defines the Mississippian political economy, and that the Mississippian prestige-goods system represents the culmination of a long-term evolutionary process. How can I say this and accept the curmudgeons’ point? I can because the curmudgeons have also overgeneralized. The flakes and the curmudgeons, I suggest, have each focused on one extreme of a spectrum of political strategy, a spectrum that was described by Richard Blanton, Gary Feinman, Steve Kowalewski and myself in our 1996 Current Anthropology article "A Dual Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization." The Mississippian prestige-good system, I suggest, is a manifestation of a network political strategy, one that was adopted and abandoned within the course of Mississippian evolution. What the curmudgeons see as a strongly local and regional world is, I suggest, the manifestation of a corporate political strategy which, like the network strategy, was adopted and abandoned over the course of Mississippian evolution.

My argument today is that both the flakes’ and the curmudgeons’ views are accurate, but only for specific times within the Mississippian period. I am also going to suggest that we can recognize a longer-term history of fluctuations between network and corporate strategies that goes back to at least the Late Archaic period.

Prestige Goods

Before presenting evidence to support these arguments, I need to digress a moment to talk about prestige-goods. As I define them, prestige-goods have three formal characteristics: (1) they are generally considered to be valuable, (2) they are symbols of status that are uniquely controlled by particular individuals or groups, and (3) they are used for payment of brideprice, initiation, funerary, or other ceremonies of social reproduction. I have examined the prestige-goods used in a sample of 27 societies selected from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample and found that four types of goods are repeatedly present: (1) furs, (2) bead goods (particularly shell beads), (3) small personal ornaments or durable precious materials, and (4) larger, more complex personal ornaments of less durable, often plant or animal materials (Peregrine 1991, 1992:47-60). Of these, only bead goods and small personal ornaments of durable materials are likely to survive in the archaeological record, and these are what I analyze here (calling them "bead goods" and "exotic goods", respectively).

I must point out that in no case I examined, and in no case I have come across since I conducted this study, were either ceramics or stone tools used as prestige-goods. I point this out because there have been a number of papers which suggest these items were prestige-goods. I want to make it clear that, at least by the formal definition I am using (a definition which hinges on the use of these goods as payment in ceremonies of social reproduction), neither ceramics nor stone tools can be analyzed as prestige-goods. This is important, because it means that when James Brown or Charles Cobb discuss Mill Creek hoes, or when Timothy Pauketat or Thomas Emerson discuss ornate ceramics in terms of a prestige-good system, or when they critique the idea of a prestige-good system based on the analysis of ceramics or tools, they are fundamentally misapplying the concept as I use it and as it was developed and used by Claude Meillassoux, Jonathan Friedman, Michael Rowlands, and others.

I want to make it clear that there is a vital distinction between non-local "fancy" goods and prestige-goods. Prestige-goods are used as payment in ceremonies of social reproduction. Controlling access to prestige-goods allows the potential for some control over social reproduction, and that potential is an essential part of political strategy in prestige-good systems. Ceramics and stone tools are not used, at least in any society I know of, as payment in ceremonies of social reproduction, and thus controlling access to them does not allow the potential for control over social reproduction. Therefore, ceramics and stone tools play little or no role in political strategy in prestige-good systems, at least as I and the scholars who first developed the concept define them. With that point made, I can now turn to the Mississippian prestige-good system.

The Mississippian Prestige-Good System

In prior work I have argued that all Mississippian societies were participants in a prestige-good system that evolved out of Late Woodland corporate lineages around A.D. 900 (Peregrine 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995). Today I want to revise that argument. The Mississippian prestige-good system evolved out of a network political strategy that began being adopted by political leaders around A.D. 1100 (using FAI-270 dates). The strategy was unsuccessful, and was dropped by A.D. 1300. The Mississippian prestige-good system, then, only existed for about 200 years, during a time when political leaders implemented a network strategy that was ultimately unsuccessful.

What is a network political strategy? As we defined it in the article I mentioned earlier, network strategy is characterized by "a political-economic pattern in which preeminence is an outcome of the development and maintenance of individual-centered exchange relations established primarily outside of one’s local group" (Blanton et al. 1996:4). Archaeologically, we would expect this strategy to show evidence of long-distance trade in exotic goods, control of those goods at the highest level of society, and various forms of individual aggrandizement on the part of political leaders. The other end of the spectrum from the network strategy is the corporate strategy. Corporate strategy is based on "the establishment and maintenance of a cognitive code that emphasizes a corporate solidarity of society as an integrated whole, based on a natural, fixed, and immutable interdependence...between rulers and subjects" (Blanton et al. 1996:6). Archaeologically, a corporate strategy is reflected in reduced consumption of exotic goods, reduced evidence of individual aggrandizement, and the presence of large public works manifesting the corporate ties that bind the society together.

In her 1996 dissertation, Mary Beth Trubitt offered tantalizing evidence that such a corporate-network shift had taken place within the Mississippian polity at Cahokia during the Stirling phase (ca. 1150). Trubitt analyzed households and shell bead workshops to (1) measure the extent of status differentiation between households and (2) determine whether shell bead production was concentrated in higher-status households. What she found was a pattern of change within the Mississippian time period. Contrary to the findings of other scholars (myself included) status differences are not marked during the earliest periods at Cahokia, but only become evident late. Trubitt concluded that we should view "the Lohmann and Stirling [phases] as a time of the emergence and definition of elite lineages...and the later Stirling and Moorehead [phases] as a time of...increasing contacts with other areas and importing more exotic goods into the American Bottom, resulting in increased separation between elites and commoners at the local level" (Trubitt 1996:274). What Trubitt described, I suggest, is a shift from a corporate to a network political strategy between the Lohmann and Moorehead phases.

Indeed, Trubitt herself suggests this in a paper delivered at the 1997 Southeastern Archaeological Conference. In this paper Trubitt argues that the changes in household differentiation and craft production she described in her dissertation, as well as evidence from mound construction, points to a shift from a corporate strategy to a network strategy within the Mississippian polity at Cahokia. She gives evidence that Lohmann and early Stirling phase mound construction at Cahokia was a communal event demonstrating the power and prestige of corporate groups. She argues that the internments within some of these mounds also reflect communal events. By the Moorehead phase, such mound construction and internment had virtually ceased, and some mounds were even formally "capped off" by a thick layer of clay. Trubitt concludes that the "shift in emphasis from mound building in the Lohmann and Stirling phases to prestige goods production and exchange in the Moorehead may reflect changes in how power was "materialized": a shift from corporate power held by the lineage group, to the chief as individual power holder" (Trubitt 1997:10).

Corporate-Network Transitions in the American Bottom

Today I offer further evidence to support the idea that a transition from a corporate political strategy to a network strategy took place in the American Bottom region between roughly A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1200. My evidence comes from some 514 burials I analyzed as part of my dissertation research--the same data I used to support the idea of a Mississippian prestige-good system. Here, however, I have made one significant change in the data. Rather than analyze all these burials as representing "Mississippian," I analyze them as a time-series, looking for changes within the Mississippian period. The variables I use are the same as those in my earlier works, and I refer interested scholars to them (Peregrine 1990, 1992).

What we see here is a chart showing the total number of prestige-goods found in burials dating to roughly A.D. 1050, A.D. 1150, and A.D. 1350. Clearly the number of burials with large amounts of prestige-goods increases dramatically by A.D. 1150 which, in the calibration used here (FAI-270), represents the end of the Stirling phase--precisely where Trubitt identified a shift from corporate to network strategies. We also see here a marked decline in the number of burials with large amounts of prestige-goods by A.D. 1350, which I suggest marks a shift back to a corporate strategy by the Sand Prairie phase.

This chart presents a similar pattern, but displaying only the number of exotic goods in the burials. These represent goods that might be more likely than others to be used to make aggrandizing displays and to mark individuals as being different from others. In a network strategy we would expect these goods to increase significantly, and that is what we see here in burials dating to roughly A.D. 1150.

Beyond there simply being more exotic goods, we would also expect those goods to be in the hands of very few people--those individuals attempting to differentiate themselves from others. This chart, showing the standard deviation in the number of exotic goods in burials, shows that for the A.D. 1150 time period there is a much greater diversity in the number of exotic goods in burials than for either of the other time periods. If we look back at the previous chart we can readily see that this is caused by a number of extreme outliers--individuals with large numbers of exotic goods, and this, again, is exactly what we would anticipate seeing in the material pattern of a network strategy.

Based on this evidence, I suggest that we can see a transition within the Mississippian period from a corporate-oriented political strategy in the earliest time periods, shifting to a network-oriented strategy later, and ultimately shifting back to a corporate-oriented one by the end of the period. But that is not all we can see with data of this sort. During 1994 and 1995 I had students code data on Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, and Middle Woodland burials in the American Bottom region using the same codebook I did for the Mississippian burials. I analyzed those data in the same way, and have charted them here.

On this chart we see the total number of prestige goods found in individual burials. There are two distinct peaks, one in the Middle Woodland period, with burials dated roughly A.D. 1, and one in the late Stirling phase, dated roughly A.D. 1150. I would argue that the peak in the Middle Woodland period, like the peak in the Mississippian period, represents the material evidence of a network political strategy at work. And we can see further evidence of this in the next chart.

This chart shows the standard deviation of prestige-goods in burials. Clearly there is greater variation in the number of goods in individual burials in both Middle Woodland and late Stirling phase time periods than in any other. Again, I suggest this is the manifestation of individual aggrandizement on the part of political leaders, and represents a network political strategy at work.

Conclusions

I suggest that a repeating pattern of corporate-network shifts characterizes the history of polities in the American Bottom region, starting at least in the Late Archaic period with the building of the first corporate burial mounds. Interestingly, the Late Archaic period also witnesses the first clear evidence of long-distance trade in prestige-goods. I have no data from the Early Woodland period, but I suggest it does not represent a pattern much different from either the Middle or Late Archaic periods that preceded it--that is, it maintained a corporate pattern. During the Middle Woodland period a network strategy evolved. Why? That is the subject of another paper, but clearly it must have had much to do with the increasing sedentism, territoriality, and beginnings of subsistence horticulture that characterize the period. Network strategies, as we discuss in our Current Anthropology paper, are generally unstable, and I suggest the Late Woodland period marks a return to a corporate strategy. I have no burial data from that period to support this position, but anyone familiar with the archaeological record of the Late Woodland period knows that long-distance trade ebbs, individual aggrandizement is lacking, and populations disperse into smaller groups, likely based on corporate lineages. That is the situation we find at the beginning of the Mississippian period, where emergent political leaders begin to consolidate power through the existing corporate structures. It is only by the late Stirling phase that a network strategy begins to develop--a short lived strategy that provided us some of the greatest works of Native American art in the form of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, but that also was unstable and ultimately unsuccessful.

Whether or not this picture of la longue duree of American Bottom history is accurate, I think it offers an interesting lesson. What we see as "fluorescence" or "expansion" may not always represent a fundamental shift in the scale, complexity, or integration of a culture, but rather may reflect the increased visibility that a network political strategy gives to the material record. After all, conspicuous consumption and ostentatious display tend to make themselves just as obvious in the archaeological record as they do in the eyes of the people who witness them firsthand. What we see as "collapse" or "contraction" might, similarly, not represent a fundamental economic or social change, but rather a shift to a more local, restrained, corporate political strategy that downplays external ties and ostentatious display. Thus within the larger categories we create to analyze the past, like Mississippian, categories that do hold together as socio-cultural entities, we might find varying political strategies at work. The effect of these strategies may color our perception of the material record and hence, our understanding of the culture’s evolution. This is something, I suggest, we need to think about as we interpret the past.