Theory and World Archaeology: Japan - Archaeology of Power: Kinship, Ritual and Ideology Revisited

Post-processual archaeologies have developed various ways in which representational devices of power and means of constituting and legitimising power can be captured and described by drawing upon elements of contemporary social theories in a selective manner. However, the existence and the nature of power itself is taken for granted and the character and content of social systems upon which the operation of power based tend to be ignored.

In Japan, drawing upon its unique tradition of Marxist archaeology, archaeologists have attempted to capture and interpret the ever-changing nature of interdependence between the operational elements and the representational/legitimising elements of power.

By illustrating the nature of this unique theoretical development and the socio-historical background of this development and comparing it with the characteristics of post-processual approaches to issues about power it is hoped that a fruitful and truly international discussion about the desirable shape of archaeological theory in contemporary society will be materialised.

Can Marxist ideas still play a role in archaeology in the late Modernity

Intentions of grasping the totality of society has been covertly discouraged in the discourse of post-processual social archaeologies. This seems to result from the recognition that the investigation of totality inevitably leads to 1) teleological explanations and 2) the ignorance of the significance of the practice of the agent in the constitution of society. This dismissal of social totality goes hand in hand with the desire of being sensitive to contextual uniqueness. However, locating sole emphasis upon individual contexts and human practices conducted in them ironically prevents the proper explanation/understanding of the historical uniqueness of practices and material traces left by them from being materialised: by dismissing the necessity of being aware of causal interdependency between different social communication fields such as that of kinship, economy and politics and by trying to understand the uniqueness only in terms of the function of ideology, discourses created out of the tradition of post-processual social archaeologies have ironically become universal.

This paper will argue that the appreciation of the historical uniqueness of archaeological evidences can only be achieved by locating individual contexts in the web of causal interdependency among various social communication fields and in social totality which the nature of systemic interdependence among micro communication fields constitutes. It will be argued that implications of the way Marxist traditions have attempted to deal with social totality have to be looked into carefully at this maturing stage of post-processual archaeologies.

State formation processes: from a integrative perspective

The formation processes of early states in Japan and Europe north of the Alps are comparable as the examples of secondary state formation under strong influence from the pristine empires, although the nature of influence appears to have been different. This paper will investigate the character and impact of external influence upon the transformation process of socio-political organisations towards the formation of the early state from general comparative perspectives by analysing the case of Japan.

Founders of Marxism argued that state formation process in Europe and in East Asia were quite different: in Europe, they argued, the destruction of tribal orders based upon communal institutions resulted in the formation of early states. In contrast to that, tribal organisations not only survived but also played some key roles in the formation of Asiatic states. However, this hypothesis, as well as such new/relatively new frameworks as neo-evolutionism, neo-Marxism and arguments on chiefdoms/early states has not been fully examined its validity in terms of interdependence between the formation of state institutions and the transformation of social systems.

The thesis that Japanese early state emerged upon cognatic decent-based social organisations with influence from Chinese empire is popular among Japanese historians and archaeologists. Nevertheless, how such key state organisations as bureaucracy, standing army and the mechanism of taxation were formed while institutions characteristic in primitive societies were still in place has never been given satisfactory explanations. By concentrating on the role of kinship systems which served as the fundamental framework for basic social institutions was constituted, as Tanaka's contribution to this session will illustrate, would provide us with clues with which to solve this issue.

It shall be emphasised that totalising frameworks such as that of Marxist which accommodate systemic interdependence between distinct social organisation fields is invaluable for the consideration of such important issues as state formation in which both micro- and macro-social processes played equally important roles.

Kinship, ritual and ideology in state formation: the case of Japan

This paper will investigate the co-transformation of kinship systems, mortuary rituals and social ranking/stratification in the formation process of Japanese early state. Kinship systems constitute the basic conditions upon which social systems are reproduced, hence are closely related to the mode of the relations of dominance. Rituals also ideologically mediate the functioning of the relations of dominance. Those distinct fields of social communication are interdependent and are inferred to have co-transformed in the process of state formation.

Present speaker's investigation into biological kin ties among skeletons from mortuary contexts and their archaeological backgrounds has revealed that a ranked society based upon cognatic descent systems transformed to a stratified society with the systems of patrilineal descent at the later part of the 5th century AD. The mode of rituals also transformed concurrently and the image of collective ancestorship was replaced with the clearly recognised individual family ancestors. This transformation in the remembrance of the dead enhanced and legitimised the dominance of lineal kin members over lateral kin members.

By illustrating the above the paper will attempt to show the fruitfulness of investigating micro social contexts such as mortuary practices in connection to macro social processes such as state formation.

Archaeology and Marxism in Britain

Marxist archaeologies have been reduced to one of those -isms which are briefly reviewed and then passed by in undergraduates' courses in archaeological theory. With many social theorists eschewing Marxist ideas for a 'radical centerist' political position, the only voices left are the shrunken political groups of Trots, Stalinists and others on the extreme left. Political extremism has largely deserted the left in favour of animals and countryside - very British obsessions which turn a blind eye to the huge wealth and power schisms between first and third world and the plight of the world's poor. Within this complacent political climate, dedication and motivation for those aspects of Marxism that remain relevant today are most likely to come from archaeologists in countries other than Britain and those of western Europe and North America. This paper examines the potential for a new perspective on archaeology's relationship with Marxism which redresses current self-obsessed concerns with the body, landscape phenomenology and the constitution of the self.