Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2006 ( C 2006) DOI: 10.

1007/s10816-006-9002-4

The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective

William H. Walker1,3 and Michael Brian Schiffer2
Published online: 20 June 2006

This paper explores the materiality of social power relationally through study of social interactions with artifacts. Specically, it is argued that acquisition of an artifact instantiates social power by imposing interactions on groups taking part in that artifacts life-history activities. We introduce the performance-preference matrix, an analytic tool for systematically studying the effects of such acquisition events on activity groups. The use of the performance-preference matrix is illustrated through an example: the acquisition of electric-arc lights for lighthouses in the 19th century. Suggestions are offered for analyzing culture-contact situations and for handling singularized artifacts such as heirlooms and monuments.
KEY WORDS: social power; social theory; material culture; technology and society; performance characteristics.

INTRODUCTION Social power is a construct much employed across the social sciences and humanities and, like culture, it sports a plethora of denitions and theoretical intonations (e.g., Barry, 1976; Henderson, 1981; Mann, 1986; Stewart, 2001; Wartenberg, 1992; Wolf, 1990; Wrong, 1979). We join a rising chorus of scholars that laments the dearth of attention to artifacts in conventional social theory (e.g., Atteld, 2000; Buchli, 2002; Gell, 1998; Glassie, 1999; Latour, 1993, 1999; Meskell, 2004; Miller, 1987, 2005), particularly studies of social power insufciently grounded in the materiality of human life. This paper, therefore, theorizes social power in relation to the people-artifact interactions that comprise activities (cf. Preston, 2000:4145; Shackel, 2000:233 234). Concretely, we propose that events of artifact acquisition materialize social
1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 80003. 2 Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New

Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 80003; e-mail: wiwalker@nmsu.edu. 67

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power. A case study of 19th-century electric illumination in lighthouses introduces the performance-preference matrix, an analytic tool for assessing socialpower relationships in instances of artifact acquisition. We conclude by elucidating several implications of our formulations for analyzing culture-contact situations and for handling singularized artifacts (sensu Kopytoff, 1986) such as heirlooms and monuments. For purposes of this paper, artifact is dened broadly, in material terms, to include any humanly made or modied object, device, structure, place, or system and is used more or less interchangeably with technology. ON SOCIAL POWER: SOME PRELIMINARIES Most commonly, social power is taken to mean that individuals having privileged social identities can exercise their will or exert power over others (sensu Giddens, 1993:118). And so it is said that rulers and chiefs have the capacity to control and manage the labor and activities of a group to gain access to the benets of social action (DeMarrais et al., 1996:15). More generally, it is believed that all status differences correspond to differences in social power (cf. Sassaman, 2000:150). That is, parents maintain some control over their children, police affect the perambulations of pedestrians, and clergy can command parishioners. These kinds of characterizations illuminate the organization of normative behavior in all societies, for none lack identity-based inequalities of social power. Social power is also sometimes differentiated according to various spheres of action where it is exercised, such as economic, political, and judicial. Although these distinctions are useful for some projects, they do not acknowledge that social power can also be construed relationally in terms of people-artifact interactions, phenomena that crosscut all spheres of action. The move of regarding social power as all-pervasive resonates with trends across the academy to abandon analytic units based on traditional spheres of action and Western cultural categories (e.g., Foucault, 1973; Gell, 1998; Latour, 1993; Munn, 1986; Pollard, 2001:317). The recognition that objects have power leads to all sorts of creative renderings of the relations between people and artifacts. We believe it is necessary to rethink basic sociocultural constructs and to reformulate research questions in material terms. In making these moves, we note the valuable contributions of scholars who maintain that artifacts have politics (Winner, 1985, 1986) and social lives (Appadurai, 1986), and require that we situate consumption behavior within social processes (Douglas and Isherwood, 1996; McCracken, 1988; Miller, 1995a,b; Miracle and Milner, 2002; Wilk, 2001). The hope is that, by refurbishing sociocultural constructs and acknowledging the centrality of artifacts in all human action, archaeologists can

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contribute to building new anthropological theories and models (e.g., Bradley, 2000; Meskell, 2004; Pollard, 2001; Schiffer and Miller, 1999; Walker et al., 1995). A few examples illustrate the modest progress made to date. Unsatised with conventional theories of communication based on language, Schiffer and Miller (1999) have crafted a fully general theory that highlights the roles artifacts play in all modes of human communicationincluding language. Likewise, Walker (1995, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002) has reframed discussions of religious practice to emphasize the employment of ritual technologies. In addition, Whittlesey (1998) and Zede no (1997, 2000) have set forth frameworks for studying the material dimensions of territories and landscapes. And Hayden and colleagues (e.g., Dietler and Hayden, 2001), drawing upon extensive ethnoarchaeological research in southeast Asia, are modeling the material correlates and social consequences of feasting behavior. Morrison and Lycett (1994) also stress the importance of material correlates in their discussion of the difference between ideological claims to power and actual power at Vijayanagra. Of particular relevance to the present paper is Nielsens (1995) work on the materiality of social power, which lays a foundation for the approach taken below. Nielsen (1995:49) denes social power in terms of human practice as the ability of actors to pursue goals by acquiring and deploying resources (objects, information, and other peoples actions). By focusing on an actors power to mobilize resources according to his or her position in the social structure (1995:49; see also Joyce and Winter, 1996:3334), Nielsen highlights the relational nature of power. Once deployed in pursuit of an actors goals, artifactsespecially architecturehave multiple and often unintended effects. . .on peoples behavior (Nielsen, 1995:53). Indeed, Nielsen (1995:54) goes on to claim that every artifact and material cultural attribute has specic and, to a certain extent, predictable effects upon social relations. Thus, social relations are reected in, and consequentially affected by, for example, the capacity, accessibility, segmentation, and functional differentiation of particular structures. Nielsen species the social correlates of these attributes in some detail, and concludes with a case study on the architecture of a pre-Hispanic community in the Argentinian Andes. He counsels readers to engage in further Studies of the active role played by material culture in the formation of power relations (1995:66). Nielsen in this work demonstrates the possible contributions that a relational approach to power can make to archaeological studies of the role that architecture plays in reproducing and structuring social relations. His analysis is a useful starting point for theorizing the materiality of social power; it remains for us to construct generalizations that apply to all artifacts, not just architecture. Before turning to this task, we present relevant theoretical premises and fundamental analytic units, which constitute the ontological context for materializing constructs such as social power.

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A MATERIAL FOUNDATION We insist, along with scholars interested in practice-oriented approaches (e.g., Bourdieu, 1977; Gell, 1998; Miller, 2005), that human life consists of ceaseless and varied interactions among people and myriad kinds of things (Schiffer and Miller, 1999:2, emphasis in original). Indeed, in ethnographic settings the only phenomena directly observable, at least in principle, are people and artifacts interacting. Needless to say, one cannot observe an economy, kinship system, or religion. Such constructs are theoretical, and thus are only indirectly related to empiricali.e., materialreality. For those interested in such materiality, the observablespeople-artifact interactionsare the basis of the activity, the minimal unit of analysis, which establishes an empirical foundation for fashioning abstract analytic units about practice, behavior, or action (Walker et al., 1995). An activity is an aggregate of specic people-artifact interactions of limited duration usually conned to a place, such as feeding animal-spirit fetishes (Cushing, 1883), changing a carburetor in the garage, or excavating a feature at an archaeological site (Yarrow, 2003). An activity can be characterized by the following components (Schiffer, 1975, 1976): (1) a social group (or simply group), consisting of one or more people, (2) artifacts and other nonhuman interactors (cf. Latour, 1994), such as wild plants and animals, precipitation, and mountain ranges, (3) specic interaction patterns, and (4) particular times, places, and frequencies. We emphasize that all human activitiesfrom hunting rabbits to a wedding ceremonyare composed of people-artifact interactions. Even activities that apparently are exceptions, such as verbal communication, involve artifacts. Not only do artifacts of activity and place dene and signal social contexts, but artifacts such as body modications, ornaments, and clothing explicitly take part in the making of meaning (e.g., Gell, 1993; Schiffer and Miller, 1999, ch. 3). In effect, the human form as an interactor is turned into a communication technology. For example, on the basis of a patients physical symptoms, a shaman infers that a malevolent spirit has caused sickness. In both interactionsof patient and spirit, and of shaman and patientthe patient is treated like an artifact. Similarly, psychiatrists infer a range of individual, social, and biochemical causes from their patients performances e.g., vocalizations, physical symptoms, and interactions with people and things. Moreover, in some activities artifacts can function like persons. People attribute spirits, souls, or magical energies to religious artifacts and then engage those objects as power-laden beings (Walker, 1999). As we argue below, personications of objects and objectications of personsboth metaphorical and literalare critical to understanding how social power is often manifest relationally in people-artifact interactions. Activities can be combined to create many kinds of problem-oriented analytic units (LaMotta and Schiffer, 2001). One versatile unit is the life history of artifacts,

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which encompasses processes such as procurement of raw materials, manufacture, use, maintenance, reuse, and deposition (Schiffer, 1972, 1976). A behavioral chain is a ne-grained life history consisting of the entire sequence of activities in an artifacts life (Schiffer, 1975, 1976). Artifact life histories are employed, for example, as frameworks for inferring past activities, understanding the formation of the archaeological record (Schiffer, 1996), and building general models of technological change (e.g., Schiffer, 2005a; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987, 1997; Skibo and Schiffer, 2001). Life histories also track networks of people interacting with artifacts and other people. Latour (e.g., 1993, 1994, 1999) and others (Callon, 1992, 1999; Law, 1994, 1999) have recognized that artifacts, people, and sets of people-artifact relations can all be treated as social actors or actants. They have developed actor-network theory (ANT) to explore these relations between people and things. Cadenas We also dene people and artifacts as interactors and highlight the sets of social groups interacting with an artifact during the entirety of its behavioral chain or life history (Schiffer, n.d.; Walker, 1996). This abstract unit of societal structure has been termed a cadena, from the Spanish word for chain (Schiffer, n.d.). For present purposes, we dene the cadena to include all interactors involved in an artifacts life history, both people and artifacts. Although it is counterintuitive to imagine an analytic group containing both people and artifacts that then interacts with other artifacts, such a relational approach has certain advantages over previous modernist formulations of human activity. The modernist worldview depends on a number of Enlightenment dichotomies that assign society, nature, and religion to separate realms. Latour (1993) notes that this modern construction requires vigilant rhetorical policing of its boundaries. Indeed, he denes modernism as inherently contradictory. On the one hand, it strives to purify theory of overt transgressions of these realms, as in treating people like artifacts and artifacts like people. On the other hand, despite the purication processes naturalized by most modern theories that appeal to empirical reality, scientists and humanists alike breach these boundaries regularly. Indeed, he argues that, by establishing boundaries that y in the face of actual human relations with the material world, it is easier to create hybrid thoughts and actions that transgress these boundaries. Modern engineers design smart cars, houses, and appliances; social scientists speak of minds and symbols; and scholars in the humanities treat texts as if they were sentient. Yet all might be surprised by, and decry, the consequences and ethical dilemmas posed by their creations (e.g., human clones, societies of artifacts, or Truman Capotes nonction novel). By treating people and objects as socially equivalent or symmetrical (sensu Latour, 1994), cadenas highlight the fundamental fact that social power is

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embodied in the material relations between people and things. Such relations are particularly relevant when discussing groups that perceive artifacts as power laden, often analogous to living beingsanimate and possessing agency (Gell, 1998). Cadenas reveal how that power can carry through the lives of objects even as they move between groups of interactors. In Hopi culture, for example, men commonly wove wedding mantas of cotton in animate kivas. The kivas as well as the weavers contributed to the power that resided in these textiles, which persisted in activities long after they were given away in wedding ceremonies (Walker, 1999). Cadenas vary along two important analytical dimensions: size and heterogeneity. Their sizes can range from one person and a few artifacts interacting with just one artifact to thousands of people and artifacts participating in the life histories of hundreds of objects. Cadenas also exhibit enormous variation in social heterogeneityoverall differences in the composition of the group of human interactors from activity to activity (Schiffer and Skibo, 1997). In the most homogeneous cadena, the very same person manufactures, uses, maintains, and disposes of the artifact; that is, the person comprising the group is invariant across all activities. A pattern of moderate social heterogeneity is illustrated by the manufacture of an artifact by one group of people and objects while its use, maintenance, and disposal are carried out by other people and artifacts; this kind of cadena characterizes many exchanged items. For many industrial products, cadenas can assume an astonishing degree of social heterogeneity. For example, in a multinational corporation making computers, design teams work on individual parts; these parts are manufactured by groups and artifacts in several nations, and the nished product may be assembled by many groups and artifacts in another nation; it is then handled by shippers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers, and afterwards is acquired by consumers, perhaps around the globe. Needless to say, there might be no overlap in the memberships of the many groups taking part in these numerous and diverse activities. Obviously, larger and more socially heterogeneous cadenas offer greater opportunities for conict, inequality, and the need for negotiation over relations with artifacts. As such, the cadenathe set of people and objects specied in relation to all of an artifacts life-history activitiesgures in our effort to discern the exercise of social power in artifact acquisition. If human behavior consists of people-artifact interactions at various scales, then research questions in the social and behavioral sciences should be reformulated to include a more symmetrical understanding of people and artifacts. One can no longer be satised to analytically separate people (and the social) from their material matrix. All human activities simultaneously involve interactions in the life histories of artifacts and participation in cadenas. Separating human behavior from artifacts always results in neglect of the latter. It is no wonder that even

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the most thoughtful social scientists interested in power (e.g., Wolf, 2001) have scarcely tapped the potential of material things in their efforts to explain variation and change in human behavior. MATERIALIZING SOCIAL POWER: THE ARTIFACT PERSPECTIVE In considering how social power is manifest materially in everyday activities, one might be tempted to focus on incontrovertible symbols of social power and their immediate effects on interaction patterns. Thus, uniforms and ornaments in military organizations enable a soldier to identify anothers rank nonverbally and to respond appropriately (or not). In hospitals, gowns of varying styles and colors distinguish different roles such as doctor, nurse, and orderly, thereby structuring social interactions in that context. That artifacts playing communicative roles can symbolize statuses, roles, and other social identities, thereby denoting normative differences in social power and affecting interactions, is obvious not only to anthropologists but also to people living in every society. Although a discussion of the materiality of social power could be conned to symbolic phenomena, such a treatment would miss the ways in which social power is instantiated in the artifacts of everyday life, independently of their symbolic functions. Building on Nielsens study, we begin with the general premise that social power is the ability to affect, prescriptively and proscriptively, the interactions of others with artifacts. Social power is exercised, for example, when one group starts, stops, or precludes another groups activity, or chooses its activitys artifacts. By tracing these kinds of intergroup relationships in cadenas, generally and in specic cases, one begins to delineate through artifacts a pervasive materiality of social power. Researchers sometimes distinguish between structures of power and actual social power, a distinction that is especially useful in our project. Structural social power is a groups socially dened authority to make choices affecting the artifact interactions of others, whereas actual social power is the practices, by one or more groups, that in fact inuence a choice. Ascriptions of structural social power are based on a groups social identity and context. On the other hand, attributions of actual social power, which are group- and choice-specic, are construed in the present study as the anthropologists inferences about actual practices as played out in cadenas of varying size and heterogeneity. (Although we choose not to use the same terminology, we are inspired by Wolfs [2001:384385] discussion of scales of power from the individual performance capabilities or characteristics of a person to the power that structures the political economy on a world scale). A few examples can illustrate the distinction between the two variants of social power. On the basis of structural social power one might assume, for example, that a household head affects its members domestic activities, that a colonel

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dictates the military activities of her troops, and that a government determines the direction of a nation. But calculations of social power on these bases supply nothing more than normative expectations that might be unmet because affected groups always exercise social power and do not exist in isolation from other sources of power. Thus, parents do not select all of a childs at-home activities; colonels can encounter soldiers that evade, undermine, or act without orders; and a nations laws are resisted by its own citizens (religious movements, riots, technological change), extranational forces (Internet, smugglers, armies), and unpredictable natural processes (epidemics, hurricanes). Paying attention to human artifact networks exposes the diversity of power that goes unrecognized in these examples. The heterogeneity of household objects and opportunities for action, like the complexity of potential activities and artifacts in military institutions and nation-states, overwhelms structural approaches. Clearly, groups that are dened as structurally subordinate to others are able sometimes to offer resistanceindeed, can exercise agencybecause they inhabit cadenas that offer more heterogeneous performance capabilities. Thus, a groups actual social power, perhaps emerging through conict and negotiation, must be inferred on an activity-by-activity basis at appropriate scales through explicit identication of the networks of people and artifacts we call cadenas. ACQUISITION PROCESSES That social power is the ability to affect, prescriptively and proscriptively, the interactions of others with artifacts is, we suggest, a premise pregnant with implications and interpretive possibilities. An obvious example is the use of taboos and sumptuary rules, including dietary restrictions and warning signs, to preclude certain people-artifact interactions. In the present project, however, we explore only the instantiation of social power through artifact acquisition. Acquisition denotes an event: a potential user group comes into possession of an artifact through a mechanism such as purchase, exchange, loan, gift, inheritance, theft, or employers at. Acquisition results from a choice ostensibly made by one group of the cadena, the selector, which we stipulatesomewhat arbitrarily possesses the social power to make the choice. (Acquisition should not be equated with consumption as dened by Douglas and Isherwood [1996:37], for their definition is based on free choice, and as such is a special case within a much larger array of acquisition events.) It should also be kept in mind that, in a large-scale cadena, a selector may mean many people acting in concert with artifacts. Crosscutting the differences in acquisition mechanisms is a fundamental commonality: a choice is founded on a forecast of one or more of an artifacts performance characteristics. Performance characteristics are the behavioral capabilities of people, artifacts, and other phenomena that enable the constituent

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interactions of an activity to proceed, thus facilitating its forward motion (Schiffer and Miller, 1999, ch. 2; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987, 1997). In addition to familiar performance characteristics that permit mechanical, thermal, and chemical interactionse.g., the bending strength of a steel I-beam, a storage pots heating effectiveness, the resistance of copper to corrosion by seawaterone can delineate performance characteristics related to human senses. Sensory performance characteristics contribute to the ability of objects to interact symbolically in specic activities, such as the American ag at a football game (visual), a roasted turkey at Thanksgiving (visual, olfactory, gustatory), and the rst clarinet in a concert (acoustic). In every case, of course, symbolic interactions depend on an artifact having appropriate sensory and other material performance characteristics. Sensory performance characteristics, which also facilitate aesthetic interactions, help the researcher to frame behavioral questions about cognitive phenomena (Schiffer and Miller, 1999; cf. Nielsens [1995:52,54] social performance characteristics). Performance characteristics are dened contextually in relational (activityor interaction-specic) terms; they are not intrinsic properties of people or artifacts even though material and biological properties of interactors do affect many performance characteristics (on the distinction between properties and performance characteristics, see Schiffer, 2003). Building on insights of Winner (1985, 1986), Foucault (1977), Bijker (1995), Lansing (1991), Nielsen (1995), and others, we now come to the key premise that links social power to artifact acquisition. To wit, in all but totally homogeneous cadenas, the acquisition of an artifact redounds on the activities of a cadenas groups. A few familiar examples make this premise more concrete. In a household, one person may obtain utensils for serving and eating food, but these very same objects are used by all household members. Likewise, in an automobile repair shop, the hydraulic lift and computer diagnostic equipment, purchased by the shops owner, are used by the mechanics. Similarly, in large bureaucracies such as universities, corporations, and government agencies, employees work in buildings and ofces chosen by others and use standard issue vehicles, furniture, telephones, computers, forms, and even pens. The extreme example is the prison, where the selectors acquisitions affect virtually all of an inmates activities (Foucault, 1977). Indeed, the loss of freedom occasioned by incarceration is perhaps best expressed as an inmates legal inability to effect nary an acquisition. Very young children also inhabit a material world not of their own choosing. Likewise, hospital patients are required to interact, often quite intimately, with specialized objects that materialize the social power of administrators, insurance companies, physicians, nurses, and physical therapists. Clearly, when one group imposes an artifact on another, the exercise of actual social power can amount to oppression. Yet, power is not only about oppression and resistance (Brown, 1996), for in principle the imposed-upon group could accept with equanimity or even embrace the changes. Indeed, it is possible

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that diverse power-related processes can operate simultaneously, as Brown and Fern andez (1991) found out in their study of the assistance Ash aninka Indians provided Marxist guerillas in a 1960s Peruvian insurgency. That study initially framed the acceptance of the guerillas and the associated cadena of guns, killing, and destruction as a straightforward case of repression and external domination. Brown, however, on later reection realized their resistance focus obscured the complexity of actual power relations. With the benet of hindsight, I regret that we let an inspiring story of resistance distract us from a more thorough analysis of the specic content of Ash aninka prophecy (Brown, 1996:731). A prominent Ash aninka shaman inferred that the insurgent leader was a messiah come to fulll a millenarian prophecy and this mobilized the people to embrace the ght. Therefore, Brown (1996:731) concludes that the Ash aninka who inserted themselves into the conict were not only responding to external challenge but also advancing their own vision of existential redenition and or transcendence. One cannot assume a priori an identity between imposition and oppression, nor can the withdrawal or prohibition of an activity be equated automatically with deprivation. As we describe below in our case study of lighthouses and other examples (steel axes, ritual artifacts), negative social consequences can arise whether or not the acquisition of an artifact is voluntary or imposed. In heterogeneous cadenas, there is always a potential for conict over acquisition decisions because each group has its own performance preferences. It is a rare artifact or cluster of artifacts whose performance characteristics match the performance preferences of every group (Schiffer, 1992, ch. 2).4 As result, many groups may inuence the selector and affect the artifact choice. Thus, in exercising actual social power, children do affect their parents purchases, automobile mechanics can inuence a shop owners acquisitions of equipment, and on rare occasions university faculty have a voice in choosing their ofce furniture. It should be noted that sometimes there is ambiguity about who is the selector. A cadenas groups can inuence the selectors choice through a variety of overt and covert practices, including pouting and sulking, offering advice, whining, withholding intimacy, the silent treatment, coercion, persuasion, bickering, not carrying out activities, offering tradeoffs, working more slowly, and actual or threatened violence. Also, these practices, singly and in combination, can be repeated over long periods. Clearly, choicesas embodiments of actual social powerare often the precipitate of a complex, drawn-out, and nuanced negotiation process that might be little expressed in discourse. What is more, we doubt that participants could always furnish a reliable and accurate account of how a choice was made.
4 Moreover,

because of technological constraints, the performance preferences of any one group may be incompatible. Thus, in traditional, low-red cooking pottery, it is virtually impossible to achieve the user preferences of high impact strength and excellent thermal shock resistance (Schiffer and Skibo, 1997).

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Consequently, we believe it is impossible to know with certainty which interactions, by which groups, inuenced specic artifact choiceseven in ethnographic settings. That is why we contend that a researchers claim about the exercise of social power in a given case is an inference. But these inferences can be well founded if we make use of relevant evidence and employ appropriate analytic tools. The starting point is the recognition that, in the acquisition of any artifact, its performance characteristics may differentially satisfy the performance preferences of the cadenas groups. We can, in principle, infer the cadenas constituent groups and their performance preferences along with diverse contextual factors. Given this foundation, it should be possible to compare the performance preferences of a cadenas groups with the performance characteristics of the acquired (or nonacquired) artifact. This establishes a basis for hypothesizing which groups apparently exercised actual social power by affecting the choice. At the very least, one can assess whether that choice ostensibly privileged or oppressed specic groups. (In offering such assessments, one should be mindful that a given group, such as artifact users, might itself consist of subgroups. Thus, both dentists and patients are users of dental drills, but each group has rather different performance preferences.) STUDYING SOCIAL POWER THROUGH ARTIFACTS: ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CASE STUDIES To assist in making the diverse comparisons needed for studying the manifestation of social power in acquisition events, the investigator can employ a modied version of the analytic tool known as a performance matrix (Schiffer, 1995, 2000, 2004, 2005b; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987). A performance matrix is a table listing the performance characteristics of one or more artifacts in relation to life-history activities and (or a cadenas groups). A performance matrix can be constructed in many ways, depending on the investigators research interest and the particulars of a case. For studying social-power relationships, we introduce the performance-preference matrix, which displays the performance preferences of a cadenas groups in relation to one or more artifacts. One constructs a performance-preference matrix as follows: (1) specify an artifact or artifacts, (2) identify relevant cadena groups, including the selector, (3) list each groups preferred performance characteristics with respect to relevant activities, (4) denote with a plus (+) or minus ( ) sign whether the artifact satises each of the performance preferences, and (5) arrange the rows of each group so as to highlight clusters in the columns of plusses and minuses. Any such patterns indicate which groupsif anywere advantaged or disadvantaged by the acquisition decision. Like any modeling exercise in science, this work combines subjective and objective processes. Identifying relevant artifacts, groups, and performance

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preferences is a subjective modeling process and the product is apt to vary from investigator to investigator. Once created, however, a performance-preference matrix can be objectively examined, criticized, and if necessary refurbished. Its strength lies in the investigator successfully corralling and synthesizing as much of the available information about the artifacts, cadena groups, and relevant activities as possible. Lighthouse Illuminants In illustrating the construction and interpretation of a performance-preference matrix, we draw upon a historical case: the competition between electric and oil illumination in 19th-century lighthouses. This case is suitable because the process is well documented in the historical record, involves diverse groups having differing performance preferences, and has been closely studied (Schiffer, 2005b). Throughout the 19th century, lighthouse lamps burned some kind of hydrocarbon oil (sperm whale, lard, rapeseed, or kerosene). Even so, major maritime nations, including France, England, and the United States, monitored the development of new illumination technologies and tested promising alternatives to oil. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, tests of the electric-arc lamp in England and France showed that this technology could function as a lighthouse illuminant. The acquisition of electric-arc lighting presents an intriguing pattern: although the technology had been brought to market in the 1860s, England and France were the only nations to install it in appreciable numbers. By the mid1890s, when usage of electric-arc lamps peaked, these two nations had acquired around 20 examples, usually very bright lights in prominent locations. A few other nations had one or two lights, but most had none. Indeed, oil lamps continued to be emplaced in nearly all of the hundreds of new lighthouses built during the 18601895 period. In explaining this pattern of differential acquisition, Schiffer (2005b) suggested that the electric light was more than a navigation aid, for it also served as a political technology. Because these prominent and distinctive lights were visible to mariners and navies of all nations as well as to ocean-going travelers, electric lights denoted in material form a nations commitment to modernity and underscored its contributions to cutting-edge science and technology. Particularly for traditional adversaries France and England, the electric lighthouse signied scientic and technological prowess at a time when, as imperial powers, these nations were competing with each other on many fronts. Moreover, France and England were also in competition with other industrializing nations, especially the United States and Germany, which were making signicant contributions to science and technology, especially theoretical and practical electricity. The few nations that acquired an electric light or two (including the United States) could conspicuously advertise their mastery of electricity at a time when other new electrical

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technologies, such as the telegraph, telephone, and trolley, were transforming, or promising to transform, daily life. The electric light produced by far the brightest and whitest light, but relative to oil lamps it had performance deciencies in initial costs, ease of installation and operation, ease of repairs and maintenance, ease of administration, and so on. Many of these shortcomings stemmed from the need to install, operate, and maintain an electrical generator and the steam engine to drive it. Steam engine boilers required a constant supply of fuel (coal or coke) and water, which usually had to be transported by lighthouse tenders (specialized ships that periodically resupplied lighthouses) to remote locations inaccessible by road or rail. And, because illumination technologies had to be highly reliable, electric lights required two backup systems: another complete generator and steam engine and as well as a conventional oil lamp. The selectors in most nations were governmental or quasi-governmental lighthouse boards. After the rst experiments with electric lights in England and France, whose results were published in technical reports and journal articles and became widely known, the lighthouse board of any nation could make acquisition choices informed by unusually reliable forecasts of the competing technologies utilitarian performance characteristics. Clearly, once a lighthouse board had installed an electric light, other groups on the lights cadena had to take part in the activities that this choice imposed. Patterns in the performance-preference matrix (Table I) suggest which groups were advantaged or disadvantaged by the electric lights acquisition. Namely, lighthouse keepers and tender crews had to drastically change their work practices, for operating and maintaining electric lights required new skills and complex interactions with many new artifacts. Indeed, to enable the performance of these activities, a steam engineer and a stoker often had to take up residence in the lighthouse along with the keeper. Mariners activities were also affected: electric lights had greater penetrating power (a benet under conditions of poor visibility), but also sometimes cast confusing shadows and could briey impair night vision. One may also infer that electric lights disadvantaged tender crews because of the added supplies that had to be handled during servicing visits. Moreover, when a lighthouse board chose to install an electric light, it incurred a large increase in administrative costs and hassles, which were offset only by symbolic performance characteristics. In acquiring an electric light, then, a lighthouse board placed added burdens on lighthouse keepers and tender crews while simultaneously increasing its own burdens, perhaps made tolerable by accolades from political leaders, including Napol eon III, and greater international prestige. What can be inferred about the exercise of actual social power in the acquisition of electric lights? In these cases, the lighthouse boards structural social power, as the selector, translated directly into actual social power, for no other groups seem to have inuenced the choice. The acquisition of an electric light was

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Table I. A Performance-Preference Matrix for Electric and Oil Illuminating Technologies Employed in Lighthouses During the Late 19th Century Performance characteristics of lighthouse illuminants Performance preferences of relevant groups Lighthouse Board (Selector) Symbolizes commitment to modernity Symbolizes cutting-edge science and technology Furnishes an effective light Furnishes a reliable light Symbolizes a concern for maritime safety Inexpensive to acquire Easy to install Easy to administer Easy to repair Easy to operate and maintain Economical to operate and maintain Tender Crew Easy to store supplies Easy to load and unload supplies Lighthouse Keepers Easy to operate and maintain Easy to repair Mariners Furnishes an effective light under most conditions Furnishes a reliable light Does not cast confusing shadows Does not harm night vision Electric + + + + + + + Oil + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

clearly an imposition on keepers and tender crews; indeed, a case could also be made that the choice oppressed these two groups. This should not be surprising; after all, lighthouse boards in most nations were elite organizations, often staffed by political appointees, which lacked representation from keepers or tender crews. Members of these latter groups were treated simply as laborers who were expected to perform their duties as dictated by the technologies that the lighthouse boards imposed. Workers profoundly unhappy with their situation could simply resign, for any other form of resistance was essentially futile. In acquiring electric lights, lighthouse boards heavily weighted the symbolic performance characteristics that could serve their nations political interests, notwithstanding the oppressive effects of the acquisition on keepers, tender crews, and even on the administrative activities of the lighthouse boards. However, in the hundreds of cases in which electric lights were not acquired, one might argue that forecasts of that technologys poor performance in relation to the activities of keepers and tender crews might have affected the choice. But this argument is weak because the disadvantages that accrued to the lighthouse board

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itself might have sufced to dissuade acquisition. In these cases of nonacquisition, uncertainties remain in inferences about the exercise of actual social power. The performance-preference matrix itself rests on a host of inferences that cover a large range of actual and potential interactions between a technology and specic groups. We emphasize that there is no formulaic way to make these inferences, for the investigator is obliged to exploit and integrate varied lines of evidence, and apply his or her creativity every step of the way. Despite the inherent subjectivity in this research process, another investigator can craft an alternative performance-preference matrix for the same case and challenge the rst investigators inferences and interpretations. This kind of replicability-in-principle should be a check on egregiously incorrect interpretations. At the very least, the performance-preference matrix appears to furnish a tool for systematically investigating the effects of an acquisition event on a cadenas groups. We noted above that impositione.g., the selectors acquisition of an artifact with which other groups of a cadena must interactobviously implies inequality but does not necessarily equate with oppression, either in judgments of the affected groups or the investigator. An interesting example is furnished by the transmission of artifacts under conditions of very slow technological change. At times in past societies, as well as in some modern societal institutions such as monasteries, people get along without protest using artifacts whose acquisition they did not inuence. This comes about when enculturative activities transmit activities along with associated artifacts over which no one apparently has a choice. One group, the selector, simply acquires (makes or obtains) the traditional artifacts and imposes them on other groups. Because alternative technologies are lacking, the acquisition of the artifacts is often naturalized (or supernaturalized), as in Thats the way weve always done it." We suggest that, in such a context, when the selector has but one customary choice," the artifacts performance characteristics become de facto performance preferences for all cadena groups. It could be said that the cadena exhibits collective performance preferences. The process of naturalizing artifacts and their performance characteristics also adds another dimension to the understanding of acquisition events in contexts of changing technologies, as in the lighthouse case where alternatives were available. We propose that selectors, who make forecasts about a technologys utilitarian and symbolic performance characteristics, often personify objects both literally and metaphorically. Thus, in the lighthouse example, electrical technology personies a spirit of national modernity. This metaphorical animism was naturalized by appeals to a prophetic interpretation of scientic progress. Indeed, it would have been difcult at that time to choose a technology that personied a nations progress more archetypically than the technological control and application of the brightest articial light through electrical means. British and French lighthouse boards, representing the two greatest imperial powers of that time, could scarcely resist investing in some electric-arc lights, with their outstanding symbolic performance

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characteristics, despite the obvious hardships that would be imposed upon other groups. In contact, acculturation, and colonial situations, indigenous groups are exposed to an array of new artifacts, which may be acquired through various mechanisms. These acquisition choices sometimes have disastrous effects on a cadenas groupseven on the structure of an entire societybecause they can alter existing social-power relationships and create new ones. The paradigmatic example of this process is Lauriston Sharps (1952) study of how the Yir Yiront, an aboriginal Australian group, underwent social disintegration following the acquisition of steel axes. (We have not reworked Sharps account, but merely acknowledge that the situation he described permits other renderings and interpretations.) Prior to the early 20th century, the Yir Yiront had practiced hunting and gathering using stone and wood technologies, including polished stone axes. Stone for the axes came from quarries 400 miles away and was obtained by older men, in exchange for spears, from partners in long-standing trading relationships. These exchanges took place during important and festive tribal gatherings. Men made, maintained, and stored the axes, and were treated as their owners. Women and children used the axes, for they were a critical technology for making other tools, gathering and processing rewood, and erecting huts. To obtain an axe, a woman deferentially asked permission to borrow it from a husband or an appropriate kinsman. According to Sharp, stone axes were at the nexus of customary social relationships that embodied the actual power of the men to make this critical technology available to others: Women and children were dependent on, or subordinate to, older males in every action in which the axe entered (Sharp, 1952:76). Further, the repeated and widespread conduct centering on the axe helped to generalize and standardize throughout the society . . . sex, age, and kinship roles, both in their normal benevolent and in exceptional malevolent aspects, and helped to build up expectancies regarding the conduct of others dened as having a particular status (p. 77). Moreover, The stone axe was an important symbol of masculinity (Sharp, 1952:78), the gender that in so many activities possessed structural social power. This artifact and the social relations that surrounded its life history were sanctied by myths, the totemic ideology that chartered the present as a continuation of a past world in which marvelous ancestors had founded the clans. Not surprisingly, as one totem of the Sunlit Cloud Iguana clan, the stone axe, infused with spiritual power, played a pivotal role in ceremonies. The diverse interactions that took place during the life history of stone axes gave rise, we suggest, to collective performance preferences. But that would soon change. With the advent of missions in the 20th century, steel axes became available to the Yir Yiront in large numbers. These axes were acquired, not by older males, who avoided the missions, but by women, younger males, and even boys, who received the new tools as gifts or in exchange for labor. Older men, their structural power as

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selectors undermined, no longer monopolized the distribution of axes. The result was a revolutionary confusion of sex, age, and kinship roles, with a major gain in independence and loss of subordination on the part of those able now to acquire steel axes when they had been unable to possess stone axes before (p. 84). And, because the steel axe was not mentioned in totemic myths, this new technology lacked a dened locus in the clan system and was devoid of spiritual qualities. The Yir Yiront failed to create new myths to naturalize the behaviors involving the steel axe, nor did they develop new collective performance preferences. The results were catastrophic. Indeed, Sharp chronicles the resultant disintegration of trading relationships, ceremonies, totemic ideology, and eventually Yir Yiront society, which he argues was set in motion, in large part, by the acquisition of steel axes by newly empowered groups. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS The Yir Yiront case is an extreme example of how new acquisition patterns, especially in contact, acculturation, and colonial settings, can have majorand in this case dramaticeffects on behavior that ramify throughout a society. In other cases, when supernaturalizing forces (gods, spirits, ancestors) are undermined, societies experience revitalization or millenarian movements. We see in these processes a link between the emergence of new selectors and radical shifts in actual social power. In some cases, such changes will be followed by the rise of new collective performance preferences and the creation of new traditions. Traditions are maintained, especially in more complex societies, by the construction of large-scale communal or public structurese.g., platform mounds, temples, and pyramids. We suggest that it might be useful to regard these artifacts as the original mass media. In having these structures built, priests and kings, as selectors, placed heavy weight on certain visual performance characteristics, thereby prescribing what all members of a community and visitors had to view. Viewers of these political technologies were reminded of the immense structural social power of the elite, which contributed to the reproduction of elite-maintaining ideologies (DeMarrais et al., 1996:16; Nielsen, 1995:5556). Modern industrial societies are no different: factories, skyscrapers, houses of worship, sports arenas, capitols, statues, and other monuments similarly function as mass media (in addition to other utilitarian and symbolic functions they might perform). In some cases, these large and visually distinctive structures reinforce and perpetuate social inequalities by imposing, on all who pass by, particular visual interactions that intone structural social power; in other cases, the impositions are more benign, serving as symbols of community pride and contributing to its integration. And, of course, the same structure or monument may comfort some people while also oppressing others. Kopytoff (1986) has suggested that certain artifacts have singularized life histories, in that their participation in certain exchange spheres is prescribed or

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proscribed. Walker (1995) has applied this important insight to ritual technologies, arguing that artifacts employed in religious rituals require specic modes of disposal when they are no longer serviceable. Thus, ceremonial trash is treated differently from ordinary trash. Typically this comes about because the artifacts are regarded as being animated like people. People are not simply thrown away but are handled reverently out of respect or fear of their animate force (e.g., souls, ghosts, mana). And, we suggest, this is also the case for any singularized artifact. Indeed, the perceived animacy in singularized objects is a residue of the selectors social power, which affects its interactions with other groups. These artifacts are treated in a highly conventionalized, deferential manner because people attribute to them spiritual characteristics of the selector or others whom the selector is believed to represent, including supernaturals (Walker, n.d.). That artifacts can retain a residue of social power helps us to understand why many heirlooms and mementos, which utterly lack religious uses and exchange values, can also be singularized, occasioning special treatment. For example, bestowed by an ancestor (the selector), an heirloom retains some residue of that persons social power and, even when all uses (symbolic and utilitarian) have ceased, is not discarded like trash. Likewise, people continue to carefully curate certain gifts long after they no longer perform their original functions. Thus, many an American adult owns a beat-up teddy bear, doll, or similar childhood memento that, by virtue of possessing some residual social power of the giver, is protected from normal discard activities. On the other hand, a residue of social power sometimes marks an artifact for destruction, as in instances of kratophany (Walker, 1995). Kratophany is the violent destruction of dangerously powerful persons or things such as witches, discredited priests, and kings and their associated religious or political technologies. Not surprisingly, mass media such as a statue of Stalin or an Aztec temple become the focus of revolutionary changes in polities or religions. These behaviors can be interpreted as follows: members of the new regime attempt to destroy the residues of social power present in these artifacts for revenge and to prevent their use in a counter-revolution. Destruction (and or burial) of these structures and monuments is also required because, otherwise, they will continue to broadcast unacceptable messages to all viewers. CONCLUSION Social power is one of the most important and multivalent constructs in the academic world. During the past few decades, especially, it has served anthropologists well. Indeed, no modern researcher interested in social processesregardless of subdiscipline or theoretical frameworkcan do without it. In advancing the present project, we have argued that the exercise of social power has material consequences far beyond the identity-based inequalities that many artifacts come

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to symbolize. Indeed, every event of artifact acquisition instantiates social power in its effects on the activities of a cadenas groups. To assist in studies of the social power embodied in acquisition events, we introduced the performance-preference matrix. This analytic tool enables researchers to make explicit comparisons between the performance-preferences of relevant groups and the performance characteristics of given artifacts. Such comparisons indicate which groups were advantaged or disadvantaged by particular acquisition events, and lead to hypotheses about which groups might have exercised actual social power by inuencing the choice. We also explored additional implications of an artifact-based conception of social power for studying culturecontact situations, and for handling singularized objects such as monuments and heirlooms. By elaborating on the materiality of social power, archaeologists can, we believe, contribute to the development of new bodies of social theory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Alex Carroll, Lisa Lucero, Barbara Mills, Axel Nielsen, Scott Rushforth, Monica L. Smith, and James M. Skibo and for very useful comments on earlier drafts. Reviews by Catherine Cameron, Thomas Levy, and Mark Lycett also provided insightful suggestions and criticisms.

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