Modes
of
Production
and
Archaeology
proof
Edited by Robert M. Rosenswig
and Jerimy J. Cunningham
University Press of Florida
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Copyright 2017 by Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
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Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables ix
1. Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology 1
Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
1. Hunter-Gatherer Studies
2. Modes of Production in Southern California at the End of the
Eighteenth Century 31
proof
homas C. Patterson
3. Applying Modes of Production Analysis to Non-State, or Anarchic,
Societies: Shiting from Historical Epochs to Seasonal Microscale 52
Bill Angelbeck
4. Early Agricultural Modes of Production in Mesoamerica: New
Insights from Southern and Central Mexico 73
Guillermo Acosta Ochoa
5. Production and Consumption: heory, Methodology, and Lithic
Analysis 97
Myrian Álvarez and Ivan Briz Godino
6. Kin-Mode Contradictions, Crises, and Transformations in the Archaic
Lower Mississippi Valley 121
Bradley E. Ensor
2. Pre-State Agriculturalists
7. he Tributary Mode of Production and Justifying Ideologies:
Evaluating the Wolf-Trigger Hypothesis 145
Robert M. Rosenswig
8. he Ritual Mode of Production in the Casas Grandes
Social Field 172
Jerimy J. Cunningham
9. Bronze Economy and Mode of Production: he Role of Comparative
Advantages in Temperate Europe during the Bronze Age 205
Johan Ling, Per Cornell, and Kristian Kristiansen
3. Ancient States
10. Social Formations Analysis: Modes, Class, Gender, and the Multiple
Contexts for Agency 231
Bradley E. Ensor
11. Re-envisioning Prehispanic Mesoamerican Economies: Modes of
Production, Fiscal Foundations of Collective Action, and Conceptual
Legacies 251
Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas
4. Modern States
12. Colonialism, Articulation, and Modes of Production at an Early
Seventeenth-Century English Colony in the Western Caribbean 283
Charles E. Orser Jr.
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13. he Plantation Mode of Production 311
James A. Delle
List of Contributors 335
Index 339
1
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology
Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
It is an understatement to observe that historical materialism has had a
profound inluence on the social sciences. In fact, the proposals of Marx
and Engels are so fundamental to how social scientists, including archaeologists, analyze societies that the insights have moved to the realm
of disciplinary common sense (Gilman 1989; Kohl 1981; Patterson 2003,
2009). Processual archaeologists adopted evolutionary concepts from historical materialism through the writings of White, Wittfogel, Service, and
Polanyi—who were all Marxists—that were depoliticized in the writings
of Steward and Binford (McGuire 1993:114; Trigger 2003:13–16). Some of
the early post-processualists (e.g., Shanks and Tilley 1987a, 1987b; Spriggs
1984) advocated an idealist reformulation of Marxism, inspired by the
French structural Marxists.1 And everyone has internalized the Marxistinspired analytic program of Childe (1936, 1950) to some degree, especially
his Neolithic and Urban revolutions. he basis of some theoretical debate is
therefore not a matter of whether to employ Marxist insights, but a product
of the diferent ways that they have been fragmented and incorporated into
archaeology, oten without these ties being explicit.
Our proposal, emphasized in this book, is that historical materialism,
as originally described by Marx and Engels, remains relevant to archaeologists. here are many diferent forms of materialism, but the one deined
by Marx and Engels is particularly relevant to explain long-term patterns
in human history. he analytic system laid out by Marx and Engels assumes that economic organization is rooted in a web of social relations
(Wolf 1999:288). Homo sapiens is a social species whose history is not a
passive response to natural processes. More than social animals, our ancestors were also political animals and became more so as population density
increased. Even among the biological sciences, there is increasing realization that human evolution was embedded within a political economy (e.g.,
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2 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
Hicks and Leonard 2014). In fact, proposals for a niche construction theory
(Odling-Smee et al. 2003), when brought to their logical conclusion for
Homo sapiens, are to deine the cultural niche that humans have created
and subsequently adapted to for thousands of years.2 Such a nonreductive
materialism reairms the long-standing Marxist belief that technology, social organization, and political realms form a cohesive holism.
Our assumption in writing this introduction is that many readers (and
especially those English-speakers under ~50 years of age) primarily employ
secondhand knowledge of the writing of Marx and Engels. Basic Marxist
concepts that structure analysis (such as mode of production) have been
iltered through the writings of anthropologists and understood under different names and are now attributed to scholars of the second half of the
twentieth century. McGuire et al. (2005:356) observe “that many contemporary archaeologists, positivists, postmodernists, and feminists alike simply do not know that many of their key concepts and perspectives derive
from Marxism.” We therefore begin by reviewing key concepts from Marx
and Engels’ original writings and deine basic Marxist terms.
Fundamental to a historical materialist analysis is the mode of production that describes how sociopolitical organization and economic relations
are integrated and how surplus is deployed. As Saitta (1994:226) notes: “hat
all societies produce surplus labor was one of Marx’s key insights, and this
basic idea has been developed by anthropologists.” How this surplus labor
is organized and “spent” provides the engine for social developments (but
see Clark [2007] for a contrary opinion).3 In the collection of essays that
follows, modes of production are employed to understand a wide range of
societies. We adhere to a basic tenet in mode of production analysis, which
is that diferent production systems have their own economic and political
“logics.” his does not mean that economic decisions are irrational; rather,
that rationality is expressed diferently according to particular social and
political organization as well as ideological traditions that structures decision making. We accept that “rational” decisions underlie all economic
organization and decisions of individual actors. However, the structure
of sociopolitical relations (especially diferences between those that are
egalitarian and hierarchical) afects how economic rationality is expressed
(Hirth 1996:205; Patterson 2003:25–27; Saitta 1994:207). As discussed at
greater length below, we describe Eric Wolf ’s (1982) three distinct “logics”
that can be discerned based on diferent modes of production (i.e., kinordered, tributary and capitalist). hese are not necessarily the only modes
of productions (and authors in this volume describe a range of modes) but
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Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 3
they are inclusive and simple so as to focus attention on historical process
rather than classiication.
Modes of production are used in a variety of ways by authors in this
book but all employ the framework as an analytical tool to explore the
reproduction of society. Each author provides examples of how one or
multiple modes of production (in succession or simultaneously) promotes
distinctive questions and new insights about the past. he aim of the volume is not to (re)airm the value of mode of production analysis to those
already convinced of its utility, but instead to suggest to a broader audience that such analyses can provide insights that are not available through
conventional archaeological approaches. As a group, we follow Marx’s
analysis of capitalism in making our cases for the utility of mode of production analysis by working through concrete examples. Changing modes
of production—and combinations of modes (Cunningham, chapter 8; Ensor 2000:20–21, Ensor, chapter 10; Gailey 1987:34–38; Gailey and Patterson
1988; Patterson 1986:56–57; Patterson, chapter 2)—should resonate with
all archaeologists who collect diachronic data and try to infer changing
economic organization, social relations, political structure and associated
forms of social consciousness (also known as culture).
It is worth emphasizing that modes of production, by their very deinition, do not refer to a stable form of organization (either through time
or over space). Marx and Engels deined various modes of production as
abstractions played out in the historical contingencies of actual societies.
Ancient societies were described as having Germanic, Slavic, Asiatic, and
Teutonic Roman modes of production, deined in the ethnic terms of social
science at the time. Such early modes were further contrasted with a capitalist mode of production that was spreading during the 19th century and a
feudal mode that was waning in Western Europe at the time. Precapitalist
modes were oten vaguely modeled and/or inconsistently deined (Gilman
1984:115, 1995; Roseberry 1989:155; Wolf 1982:75). Marx’s deinitions of noncapitalist modes are thus not always directly transferable for archaeologists
to adopt (Rolland 2005; but see Anderson 2010:198). However, it does not
matter whether Marx “should have postulated two or eight or iteen modes
of production, or whether other modes should be substituted for those suggested by him. he utility of the concept lies not in classiication but in its
capacity to underline the strategic relationships involved in the deployment
of social labor by organized human pluralities” (Wolf 1982:76, emphasis
added). It is these strategic social relations that transform labor into political capital that concern us in this volume.
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4 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
here is a risk of reifying a series of modes of production into a set of
types and the classiication of society as providing a goal in itself. A classiication-focused research agenda for pigeonholing modes of production
would parallel the limited utility of processualist evolutionary typologies,
epitomized in identifying chiefdoms as a research end in itself (Yofee 1993;
Pauketat 2007). Soviet scholars and the so-called vulgar materialists4 were
criticized for this very thing. We accept this critique as valid and endorse a
more nuanced historical materialism such as that proposed by Wolf (1982),
Roseberry (1989), Haldon (1993), Trigger (1993, 1998, 2006), and Patterson
(2003, 2009), among others. We agree that ideal evolutionary types (devoid
of historical speciicity) provide limited interpretive insight. However, nonreiied modes of production can instead be used to comparatively explore
historical (or prehistorical) processes.
Studying mode(s) of production is to ask questions about how social labor is organized, how surplus is deployed, and how this can either maintain
or change an existing political system. Surplus labor is work undertaken
beyond that required to maintain the life of those working and their dependents. Archaeologists generally identify the material residue of surplus
labor in exotic or labor-intensive objects as well as monumental architecture. Surplus can be produced by egalitarian foragers and ranked horticulturalists as well as socially stratiied ancient empires and modern nationstates (or any other social plurality). A key question in mode of production
analysis is how surplus is directed to maintain or transform a social and
political status quo that can be egalitarian, hierarchical, or both. Put simply,
the mode of production concept provides a set of heuristic concepts that
can focus attention onto speciic processes and actions in a social and historical context and develop a framework to compare the structural logics
and organizations of a wide range of societies. It thus provides the potential for archaeologists to comparatively investigate changing human organization (Chapman 2003:29–31; Trigger 1993:167–169, 1998:89–91). Modes
of production focus attention on how social labor is deployed to facilitate
the reproduction of society, and how political motivations result in the
appropriation of surpluses by those in power. McGuire (1986:253) notes,
“It does not seek to specify universal causes but rather to identify the key
structural relations we should examine in any given instance of change.”
Archaeologists have long acknowledged that understanding a society’s political economy provides a powerful framework through which to explore
the economic foundations of political evolution (Cobb 1993; Feinman and
Nicholas 2004; Hirth 1996). he mode of production does one better by
proof
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 5
emphasizing speciic linkages between the economy and the realms of politics and ideology. In the nineteenth-century context in which they were
writing, Marx and Engels agreed with the political economy framework
(advocated by Adam Smith, etc.) as a description but one that failed to “see”
who beneited from the value-laden, taken-for-granted concepts embedded in industrial society. he mode of production framework helps us to
explore a “politicized political economy”—both today and in the past.
In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we irst review the mode
of production framework as it was originally deined by Marx and Engels.
We then examine two inluential uses of the term mode of production, speciically, the Asiatic mode of production (Polanyi 1957; Wittfogel 1957) and
the household mode of production (e.g., Sahlins 1972). We observe that
Wittfogel and Polanyi’s work caused much disagreement (and spurred
much new research) by their particular view of how ancient non-Western
societies were organized. Sahlins’ deinition of a “domestic” mode of production is a neo-Marxist redeinition of the term based on ontologically
idealist assumptions that are fundamentally antithetical to what Marx and
Engels actually wrote (Trigger 1993:177). A domestic mode of production
would more accurately have been called a domestic “type” or “form” of
organization.5 We end our introduction by describing Eric Wolf ’s (1982)
formula of kin-ordered, tributary, and capitalist modes of production. Our
intention throughout this chapter is not to squabble about the historiography of Marxist theory, or with those who draw inspiration from it. Instead,
we provide a simple deinition of modes of production that is amenable to
making cross-cultural comparisons.
proof
Marx and Engels’ Modes of Production
As noted, our goal is to begin with what Marx and Engels wrote about
modes of production to provide a historical context for the terms. Rather
than being synonymous with a “type” or “form” of production, modes of
production are the social relations that permit the existing technology, environmental conditions, etc. to generate surplus that is then employed to
perpetuate, reproduce, or alter existing social and political relations (and
associated forms of social consciousness). he social/political system can
be egalitarian or hierarchical (or both), but those in decision-making positions generally strive to maintain the culture norms that have placed them
in decision-making roles.
6 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
he German Ideology
In the 1846 coauthored volume he German Ideology, Marx and Engels
critique the idealist Hegelian tradition in which they were themselves educated. If at times the vehemence of their materialist position seems overstated, it is because they were reacting to what was, in their minds, the
intellectual norm of their day. Like all theoretical propositions, Marx’s historical materialism is anchored in a particular intellectual history, in this
case, in a rejection of Kant’s and Hegel’s idealist understanding of humanity
and its history (see Kolakowski 1978:132–138). Hegel thought that humanity’s essence was spiritual consciousness and that history was the result of
processes that objectiied that consciousness in the world and reabsorbed
that externalized consciousness through sublation. History was thus a series of steps toward self-awareness. Marx wanted to set Hegel “right side
up” by suggesting that humanity’s nature was not a metaphysical spiritual
essence but lay in human interactions with the natural world through the
process of labor. hey begin, in a section titled “Feuerbach: Opposition of
the Materialistic and Idealist Outlook,” by stating: “As we hear from the
German ideologists, Germany has in the last few years gone through an
unparalleled revolution. he decomposition of the Hegelian philosophy
. . .” (Marx and Engels 1978:147). hey critique the Young Hegelians (see
Breckman 1999; Stepelevich 1990), who were also criticizing the traditional
Hegelian position as being politically conservative and serving to bolster
the German state. However, the Young Hegelians were irmly wedded to
the idealist ontology of the Hegelian tradition. Marx and Engels make their
materialist critique of this absolutely clear:
proof
Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in
fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians
declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the
Young Hegelians have to ight only against these illusions of the consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men,
all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their
consciousness, these Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral
postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human,
critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. . . . he Young Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly
“world-shattering” statements, are the staunchest conservatives. . . . It
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 7
does not occur to any of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of
their criticism to their own material surroundings” (Marx and Engels
1978: 149).
For Marx and Engels, politically progressive ideas are fatally undermined if
the idealism of the Hegelian tradition is maintained. his means that twentieth-century French structural Marxists (as well as their post-structuralist
and post-processualist brethren), with their idealist ontology, are the intellectual heirs of the Young Hegelians rather than Marx and Engels. It is on
this point that Trigger (1993:186) long ago argued “that idealist explanations, and therefore much (but not all) of what passes as neo-Marxism,
forfeit the right to bear the name.” But neither were Marx and Engels proposing economic reductionism. In a letter to Joseph Bloch written in 1890
(ater Marx’s death and ater the entire corpus of their writings had been set
to paper), Engels makes this clear:
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determined element in history is the production and reproduction of
real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence
if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the
only determining one, he transforms the proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. he economic situation is the basis,
but the various elements of the superstructure: political forms of the
class struggle and its results . . . and even the relexes of these actual
struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into
systems of dogmas, also exercise their inluence upon the course of
the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form” (Tucker 1978:760, italics in original).
proof
Rosenswig (2015) has recently discussed ultimate versus proximate causation (or “determined elements in history”—to use Engels’ words above)
in the context of Mesoamerican food production. He argues that ultimate
causes associated with climate change (with resulting environmental, demographic changes) afected the economic organization of Late Archaic
and Early Formative period (5000–1000 cal bc) Mesoamerican societies,
but, crucially, that these changes played out through proximate causes
that were deined by the historical details of the superstructure (see also
8 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
Rosenswig 2012). To frame ultimate causality in terms of the economy is
the essence of Marx and Engels’ insight as is the necessity that the economy
is embedded in social relations.
he nuanced materialism of Marx and Engels is deined in terms of the
mode of production concept in he German Ideology. hey argue:
he way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends
irst of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they ind in
existence and have to reproduce. his mode of production must not
be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a deinite form of activity of these
individuals, a deinite form of expressing their life, a deinite mode of
life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What
they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what
they produce and with how they produce. he nature of individuals
thus depends on the material conditions determining their production (Marx and Engels 1978:150, italics in original).
Again, they emphasize that social relations are fundamental to the mode
of production because that is “how they produce” and how they generate
a surplus. his is also the passage that has led Bate (1977, 1998) and others in Latin America (Benavides 2001; Patterson 1994) to deine a Modo
de Vida as the mode of life that can deine difering peoples that share the
same mode of production (Acosta, chapter 4; Ensor 2000). As with the
position advocated here, scholars in many parts of the Spanish-speaking
world reject the functionalism and idealism of the French structural Marxists for the nuanced historical materialism of the original texts (Chapman
2003:18–31; McGuire 1993:110–111).
proof
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
In his 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
Marx succinctly and unambiguously laid out the position that would guide
his future analysis. We quote it at length here, as it is foundational to historical materialism and the generations of subsequent scholars’ discussions
of modes of production. Marx begins:
My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms
of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the socalled general development of the human mind, but rather have
their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum total of which
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 9
Hegel . . . found combines under the name “civil society,” that however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy
(Marx 1978:4).
His materialist ontology is consistently presented in explicit contrast to
Hegelian idealist philosophy when deining the organization of society.
One sentence later, he continues:
he general result at which I arrived and which, once won, served as
a guiding thread for my studies, can be briely formulated as follows:
In the social production of their life, men enter into deinite relations
of production which correspond to a deinite stage of development
of their material productive forces. he sum total of these relations
of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to
which correspond deinite forms of social consciousness. he mode
of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not consciousness of men that
determine their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
determines their consciousness (Marx 1978:4).
proof
While this passage gives us what might be considered the key “components” of a mode of production, it is important to stress that the concept
was not formulated as a “model” of society, but was part of a distinct philosophical system that sought to explore humanity as a product of its material existence. Labor was the most fundamental concept because, as physical beings, humans transformed nature to produce the nutrients that they
needed to survive through labor and came to understanding consciousness
through actions in the world. Many of the key concepts, such as means of
production or relations of production, relate to this fundamental question
about how humanity produces its existence through labor. For example, the
means of production is the dominant technology (e.g., stone tools, metal
plow, factory) along with knowledge and organization of its use. In addition, the relations of production are the social relations (e.g., kinship, serfdom, private property) that allow for the means of production to operate.
hese are framed by associated forms of social consciousness that provide
a meaningful context for the deployment of labor and reproduction of the
social system. Together the means and relations of production, as well as
the political and jural superstructure, provide the elements that establish
a holistic and dialectically intertwined mode of production. New forms of
10 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
technology and new social relations have the potential to produce contradictions that lead to the emergence of new modes of production, just as
preceding modes of production remain as “survivals.” he point is not to
get bogged down in Marxist terminology but to emphasize that the mode
of production is the overarching organization of Marx and Engels’ analysis
and the way they expanded the political economy perspective of Adam
Smith and others.
Marx continues with an explanation of how change occurs:
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces
of society come in conlict with the existing relations of production,
or—what is but a legal expression of the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From
forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn
into their fetters. hen begins an epoch of social revolution. With the
change of economic foundations the entire immense superstructure
is more or less rapidly transformed (Marx 1978:4–5).
he mode of production concept is the most fundamental part of Marxist analysis and why we focus on it in this collection of essays. Changing
modes of production provide yet untapped potential for archaeologists
with our diachronic data. We cannot overemphasize that what distinguishes historical materialism from other forms of materialism is that the
engine of change is internal to society itself. While environmental conditions and population levels can provide the ultimate potential for change to
occur, it is the speciic, historically determined changes in social relations
that are the proximate causes that explain how change actually happened.
Marx continues by emphasizing his ontological frame of explaining such
changes:
proof
Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks
of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by
its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be
explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conlict between the social productive forces and the relations
of production (Marx 1978:5).
Marx clearly and consistently lays out a materialism that is based in social
relations and is therefore not reductive to simple economic or environmental causes. here are those (e.g., Stalin) that quote Marx to say that the
economic base determines ideology and other aspects of the superstructure
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 11
in a simple and direct manner (i.e., vulgar materialism). here are others, like the French structural Marxists or post-processual archaeologists,
who argue that social relations and ideology determine the economic base
(i.e., vulgar idealism6). Both are at odds with what Marx and Engels actually wrote, as Roseberry (1989) has so cogently argued. Marx and Engels’
original writings were more nuanced than oten given credit and therefore worth returning to (Patterson 2003:19–20). When economic relations
change they can come into conlict with ideological principles, laws, etc.
and create tensions within society. his antifunctionalist proposal—that
conlict and negotiation internal to society explain cultural change—is one
of the single most signiicant contributions of historical materialism for
archaeologists. Marx and Engels focused on speciic historical instances of
change. hat is, on how capitalism was displacing feudalism in Europe and
how European royalty with their divine right to rule and ownership of all
national lands was quickly (by the mid-1800s) being displaced by various
forms of parliamentary and republican rule justiied by democracy and
with new private property laws (Meillassoux 1972:93–94). Elected houses
of government, private property, and democratic ideals that justify them
were not what ultimately caused change; these changes were wrested from
the monarchy by an emerging capitalist class based on their newfound economic power. Marx and Engels’ theoretical proposal therefore needs to be
understood in terms of the concrete and historically speciic political environment of nineteenth-century Europe.7
In the inal passage from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy we will quote, Marx elaborates his view of both change and modes of
productions. He observes that
proof
“mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task
itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already
exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines
Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production
can be designated as progressive epochs on the economic formation
of society (Marx 1978:5).
Again, the cause of change is internal to society, and the manner in which
it occurs is therefore culturally speciic and historically determined. his
second mention of modes of production could be read as a mechanical,
unilineal evolutionary typology that all societies pass through, and this
is precisely what Stalin did (see Currie 1984). However, Marx is simply
12 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
describing what he knows to have happened, and this is only to the best of
his mid-nineteenth-century knowledge of the past. It is worth emphasizing
that the point of this review is not to argue that everything Marx ever wrote
was correct. His writings are illed with the nineteenth-century taken-forgranted sexism and Western ethnocentrism that we disagree with today.
he point is instead to elaborate the insight provided by his materialist
analysis of history and social change through the speciic deinition of
modes of production.
Anthropology’s and Others’ Modes of Production
he mode of production concept continues to igure prominently in social
science analysis. Lately, some argue that modes of production should be
reengineered to deine modes of exchange (Foster 2014; Karanti 2014) or
how surplus production articulates with social relations (Graeber 2006:77).
Others, particularly in relation to development of the Indian subcontinent,
continue to argue for the importance of the classical mode of production
concept (Banaji 2012), but this is not universally accepted (see Bernstein
2013; Campling 2013). he mode of production literature is immense, and
we do not attempt to summarize or distill it here. Instead, we observe that
idiosyncratic and incomplete uses of modes of production (and reactions
to them) led to theoretical ennui among many anthropologists by the 1980s
(see Roseberry 1989:129, 145). Further, arguments about modes of production can descend into detailed histories of Marxist theory that is of-putting
to archaeologists not politically inclined or unfamiliar with nineteenthcentury terminologies and intellectual history. Our contention in putting
this book together is that as originally conceived by Marx, and updated
by Wolf (and others) for precapitalist societies, the mode of production
has continued value for the interpretation of archaeological data. We critically discuss two examples of anthropological uses of modes of production
to provide clarity as to the processes and social relation that are entailed.
Simply put, mode(s) of production provide a framework to explore the
organization of surplus production and appropriation and how this is employed to maintain the social and political status quo of existing kin and/
or class relations. As an inclusive framework, it is ideally suited for making
cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparisons.
proof
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 13
Wittfogel and the Asiatic Mode of Production
During the middle of the twentieth century, considerable efort was expended in deining precapitalist modes of production. he Asiatic mode
received particular attention and was dissected from the Western academic
tradition (Krader 1975) as well as from within the Soviet tradition (Dunn
1982; Wittfogel 1957:6–7). Polanyi’s (1957) Marxist-inspired work, with its
divide between capitalist and pre-capitalist society, assumed absolute and
unchanging power of Eastern dictatorships and was inluential for many
archaeologists. However, Wittfogel (1957:6) notes “that Marx, far from
originating the ‘Asiatic’ concept, had found it ready-made in the writings
of classical economists” (see also Wittfogel 1957:372–386).8 Arguably the
single most relevant formulation of the Asiatic mode of production for
archaeologists was Wittfogel’s (1957:369–412) detailed treatment in Oriental Despotism, where he reviews how Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin each
deined the Asiatic mode of production. Wittfogel’s perspective, that irrigation infrastructure was crucial to monopolizing political power, was so
inluential that it launched a sustained treatment of the concept (e.g., Bailey
and Llobera 1981; Currie 1984; Dunn 1982; O’Leary 1989).
Our purpose here is not to review or add to debates concerning the
Asiatic mode of production. he simple fact that so much research was
conducted to both support and critique Wittfogel’s (and Polanyi’s) Marxistinspired ideas is a tribute to their importance in structuring the current
academic landscape of various disciplines, including archaeology. However, that the control of irrigation infrastructure does not explain state
power in, for example, Hawaii (Kirch 1994) or in Mesoamerica (Feinman
and Nichols, chapter 10; Ofner 1981; but see Wittfogel 1972) as Wittfogel
hypothesized, says little about the mode of production framework itself.
Instead, it simply indicates that Wittfogel’s conception is not conirmed by
empirical evaluation. Further, when processual archaeologists (e.g., Carneiro 1970:734; Flannery 1972:418) evaluated Wittfogel’s ideas, it was as a
depoliticized version that did not address the political nature of surplus
production but rather simply the importance of irrigation facilities for state
control (and so the processual archaeologists provided examples of a political economy approach rather than of historical materialism). Likewise,
Goody’s (1990) critique of the Asiatic mode of production is of Wittfogel’s
formulation—not of the analytic framework but of a speciic application.
his distinction between Marx’s mode of production concept and Wittfogel’s application is important. Currie (1984:259) convincingly argues that
proof
14 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
what Marx actually proposed was that in arid environments, rather than
the emergence of despotic states being caused by the control of irrigation
facilities, the link was instead “between conditions of irrigation agriculture and the extension of state control” (Currie 1984:259, italics in original).
herefore, rather than making a generalizable rule about the origins of state
power, as Wittfogel advocated, Marx himself was making an observation of
speciic historical instances of already established states with existing funds
of surplus labor using irrigation agriculture facilities to expand or cement
existing power. Control of irrigation infrastructure was not a cause but an
efect of state power. Marx observed a historical correlation, and Wittfogel
inverted the causal arrow (see argument in Haldon 1993:2–4).
Sahlins’ Domestic Mode of Production
Marshall Sahlins’ (1972) discussion of underproduction deined in terms of
a “domestic” mode of production is well-known to archaeologists. Within
the context of traditional societies’ reactions to colonial powers, Sahlins
(1972:86) proposed that the domestic mode of production “harbors an antisurplus principle. Geared to the production of livelihood, it is endowed
with the tendency to come to a halt at that point. Hence if ‘surplus’ is deined as output above the producers’ requirements, the household system
is not organized for it. Nothing within the structure of production for use
pushes it to transcend itself.” his is not a mode of production in the Marxist sense, as should be clear ater our review in the previous section. Sahlins’
“mode” is instead a Chayanovian description of subsistence production of
conquered peoples resisting a capitalist mode of production. his discrepancy is made clear when Sahlins (1972:86) claims: “Work is accordingly
unintensive: intermittent and susceptible to all manner of interruption by
cultural alternatives and impediments ranging from heavy ritual to light
rainfall. Economics is only a part-time activity of the primitive societies, or
else it is an activity of only part of the society.” Economic activity and the
production of surplus can most certainly not be separated from the cultural
or ritual realm according to the analysis proposed by Marx and Engels.
Sahlins’ analysis is explicitly framed within the French structural Marxist tradition, and uses its terms. For example, he cites Engels and presents
a table contrasting the relationships of the means of production between
chiely and bourgeois ownership on the very same page where he proposes
the economic rule that “there is no class of landless paupers in primitive
society. If expropriation occurs it is accidental to the mode of production
itself, a cruel fortune of war for instance, and not a systematic condition
proof
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 15
of the economic organization” (Sahlins 1972:93). How could appropriation
of surplus labor possibly be accidental to a mode of production? hat is
precisely what deines it!
In Sahlins’ second complete chapter devoted to deining his domestic
mode of production, the structural Marxist revisionism is clear. Sahlins
(1972:102) claims: “he determination of the main organization of production at an infrastructural level of kinship is one way of facing the dilemma
presented by primitive societies to Marxist analyses, namely, between the
decisive role accorded by theory to the economic base and the fact that
the dominant economic relations are in quality superstructural, e.g., kinship relations (see Godelier 1966; Terrey 1969).” His irst problem is citing
the French structural Marxists rather than what Marx and Engels actually wrote (Roseberry 1989:160–161; and see Gailey 1987:6). Second, as presented clearly in the previous section, the superstructure (religion, laws,
kin relations) certainly do structure the political economy. Just because a
historical materialist perspective assumes the economic factors are causative (in an ultimate sense) does not mean that ideology is irrelevant to
historical analysis. A materialist straw man is erected so as to present an
idealist solution to a problem that never existed. We soon learn just how
deeply antimaterialist Sahlins’ view of culture was. He claims:
proof
Hawaiian kinship is a more intensive economic system than Eskimo
kinship. Because, simply, the Hawaiian system has a greater degree of
classiication in the Morganian sense: a more extensive identiication
of collateral with lineal relatives. . . . All other things equal, then, Hawaiian kinship will generate a greater surplus tendency than Eskimo
(Sahlins 1972:123).
To argue that kinship terms (and the relationships they relect) develop independently and then result in difering propensities to intensify economic
production is squarely Hegelian, precisely what Marx and Engels railed
against in he German Ideology. he basis of Marx and Engels’ argument
(and ours) is that kinship relations come to relect (and reinforce) the conditions under which surplus is produced and deployed. Kinship relations
may evolve slowly in traditional societies, and shiting standards may not
seem abrupt to those living through periods of transition. Over dozens of
generations kinship terms and obligations can be transformed dramatically, or, as Gailey (1987) documents for the Paciic during the nineteenth
century, such changes in kinship can occur very rapidly in response to economic transformation.
16 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
Sahlins’ idealist redeinition of the mode of production has resulted in
much confusion. his very critique was long ago leveled against Sahlins’
appropriation of Marx and Engels’ terminology (e.g., Friedmann 1980), and
it is not our purpose here to propose it as an original observation. Instead,
we wish to clearly diferentiate the historical materialism we describe from
Sahlins’ much-cited book. A Google Scholar search indicates that Stone Age
Economics is Sahlins’ most cited work, with 6,447 citations as of January 23,
2016. Sahlins’ domestic mode of production thus persistently contributes
to deinitional cloudiness and impedes what we are trying to lay out in
this volume. Furthermore, Meillassoux (1981), also inspired by the Marxist tradition, employed a “domestic mode of production” but deined it in
diferent terms than did Sahlins. Equally muddying is Wilk’s (ed. 1989) use
in the subtitle of his edited volume Household Economy: Reconsidering the
Domestic Mode of Production that follows neither Sahlins’ nor Meillassoux’s
deinition. In this volume the domestic mode of production is used to understand not societies’ political economies but instead how households:
“manage and combine their production, exchange, investment, inheritance,
sharing, minding, pooling, preparing, and consuming” (Wilk 1989:25). In
fact, only one paper, of the dozen assembled in the volume, cites anything
written by Marx, only three cite Sahlins (1972), and two cite Meillassoux
(1981). Wilk’s edited volume is thus primarily interested in exploring “domestic production” rather than a mode of production (e.g., Cunningham,
chapter 8; Donham 1999). Domestic mode of production has been so variably used by anthropologists that we feel it should be retired for the sake of
deinitional clarity.
proof
Wolf ’s Modes of Production: A Streamlined Trinity
As we detail in this chapter, modes of production describe how social labor
is deployed for economic pursuits, usually with political motivation and
consequences. It is “a speciic, historically occurring set of social relations
through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature” (Wolf 1982:
75). Wolf (2001 [1981]:342–352 and see 1982:75–100, 400–404) deines a
capitalist, tributary, and kin-ordered mode of production. Wolf ’s elegantly
simple trinity of modes has been employed by many archaeologists inluenced by the Marxist tradition (e.g., Arnold 2000; Gilman 1995; Ensor 2000;
Kristiansen 1998; McGuire 1986; Rosenswig 2012; Saitta 1994, 2005; and
see McGuire 1992:152–153; Muller 1997:30–37; Patterson 2003:18–25). Such
modes are not proposed as being all-encompassing, universally applicable,
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 17
or mutually exclusive. Instead, as Wolf (1982: 76–77) observes, the goal of
structuring analysis with modes of production is in:
“revealing the political economic relationships that underlie, orient,
and constrain interaction. Such key relationships may characterize
only a part of the total range of interactions in a society; they may
comprehend all of a society; or they may transcend particular, historically constituted systems of social interaction. Used comparatively,
the concept of mode of production calls attention to major variations
in political-economic arrangements and allows us to visualize their
efect.”
A capitalist mode of production is deined by the ability to appropriate
surplus value of production and to sever the tie between producers and
the means of production (i.e., tools, land). Once this happens, the holders of wealth can dictate the terms under which they will allow workers
to operate the means of production in exchange for a wage with which
workers can then pay for what they need to sustain themselves. Workers
produce more than their wage (and the operating costs of a farm or factory or shop) to generate a surplus, which is the proit for the holders of
wealth. Such holders of wealth (aka capitalists) can increase proits either
by lowering the wages of employees or by increasing their productivity, and
the latter is usually achieved through improving the technology of production (more mechanized factories or farming practices, more eicient
types of material like iron or plastic, as well as more productive species of
plants and animals). Ever more surplus is accumulated by capitalists who
reinvest part into increasingly eicient technology, which continues to increase proits. Importantly, wealth is not capital until it is reinvested into
the system and so deines the engine that increases surplus production. In
this way, the Marxist notion of capitalism does not describe a synchronic
state (and certainly not a philosophy) but describes instead a dynamic set
of relationships. he manner in which surplus is extracted by capitalists is
economic and not (directly at least) through political mechanisms. Taxes
are not levied by the capitalist class but instead are levied to support political administrators and other state functionaries who facilitate, but do not
directly contribute to, the capitalist’s surplus production. Politicians facilitate wealth acquisition by the capitalist class domestically by maintaining
infrastructure and enforcing private property laws, and internationally by
sustaining an army to protect foreign investments.
he tributary mode of production, in contrast, characterizes economic
proof
18 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
organization where producers are not separated from the means of production. his mode of production does not set up a self-perpetuating system
of technological development that increases the surplus (and thus proit)
of those who control the means of production. Instead, surplus is extracted
directly from producers (who continue to own the means of productions
such as their tools and land) through military and political coercion. his
is the basis of a feudal system where serfs work the land and owe the lord a
proportion of their crops and/or a number of days’ work per month. Noncompliance is generally enforced by threat of violence and, when necessary,
actual violence. he organization of a tribute-extracting elite depends on
whether there is a strong central ruler or if local lords hold more sway. Diachronically, there would be a continuous struggle between the central and
local interests that make the system dynamic and luid. Central authorities
are more powerful if they command standing armies or if they can control
a strategic element of the means of production (e.g., irrigation canals). As
we have seen, such a system of powerful, centralized organization is what
Marx called the Asiatic mode of production. Local authorities are more
powerful when they control the means of coercion and/or elements of the
process of production. In such cases, local elite can limit the low of tribute
that reaches the central authorities (and this is how the feudal mode of
production was deined). As Wolf (2001 [1981]:347) observes, rather than
diferent organizational logic, with the Asiatic and feudal modes of production “we are dealing, rather, with variable outcomes of the competition
between classes of non-producers for power at the top” (and see Gledhill
1981:26). Modeling a variety of precapitalist societies that all possess exploitive relations is a signiicant contribution of Wolf ’s formulation (Haldon 1993:63–139). Kristiansen (1998:89) interprets European prehistory as
cycling between these two ends of the tributary mode of production, and
Gilman (1995:249) proposes that a Germanic mode (with even weaker central rulers) should also be considered on this continuum (see Ling et al.,
Chapter 9). As we previously emphasized, modes of production are not
functional types but instead describe the creation and distribution of surplus in a dynamic and ever-changing manner. Local and regional elites are
continually vying for the upper hand, and archaeologists have approached
such intrapolity struggles using terms such as factional competition and
heterarchy.
he kin-ordered mode of production is deined by its use of kinship relations as the key to mobilizing resources rather than economy/technology
of the capitalist mode or political/military means of the tributary mode.
proof
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 19
As Wolf (2001 [1981]:349) describes it: “Kinship thus involves symbolic
constructs that place actors into social relationships which permit them
to call on shares of social labor from others so as to efect the necessary
transformations of nature.” his is a materialist deinition of kinship as
the organizational system used to produce material goods. Far from being egalitarian, unequal relations in societies organized by the kin-ordered
mode of production are based on seniority within the structure of kinship,
and so elders, higher-ranking lineages, and the descendants of irst settlers
dominate juniors, lower-ranking lines, and newcomers. Kinship ties determine who can direct the labor of others, decide marriages, have access to
land, etc. Political hierarchy and economic egalitarianism are characteristics of many prehistoric societies in North America that operate according
to a kin-ordered mode of production. What distinguished this mode from
the other two is that “the kin-ordered mode regenerates itself and its oppositions by particularizing tensions and conlicts” (Wolf 2001 [1981]:351).
Social classes do not exist, and so conlict arises not between classes but
among individuals. However, conlicts frequently cannot be resolved in
such societies, and social issioning results, which provides a mechanism
for social change. Egalitarian foraging peoples as well as what some would
call tribes, big-man societies, and simple chiefdoms are all organized according to this mode of production, as it was through kin relations that
surplus was controlled (Ensor, chapter 10; Patterson 1986). Marx called
this “primitive communism” or the “primordial mode of production,” and
it subsumes what some have begun to call a ritual mode of production
(Cunningham, chapter 8; Rappaport 1984:410; Spielmann 2002). he kinordered mode of production also describes the organization of societies
on the Paciic coast of North America discussed by Patterson (chapter 2)
and Angelbeck (chapter 3) as well as those in Latin America presented by
Acosta (chapter 6) and Alvarez and Briz (chapter 5).
proof
his Volume
Chapters in this volume employ the mode of production concept to enhance understanding of archaeological, ethnographic, historical, ethnohistorical, and cross-cultural data from a wide range of societies. We do
not try to generate conceptual uniformity but instead seek to showcase
the ways that a mode of production analysis can be employed to analyze
past human organization. Most authors (re)introduce their understanding
of the mode of production concept and its relevance for archaeological
20 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
interpretation. Some redundancy is folded into this volume, as authors
cover ground plowed by this introduction. However, each chapter plants
the seeds for its own analysis. Further, the careful reader will note that we
do not all completely agree with how modes of production are to be used;
nor would we want theoretical homogeneity. As is generally the case when
archaeologists get together, there are as many opinions as scholars present.
As we have already stated, our aim in this volume is not to get buried
in typological quibbling. Some authors subdivide what Wolf calls the kinordered mode and Marx originally referred to as the primitive mode of
production (e.g., Angelbeck, chapter 3; Alvarez and Briz, chapter 5). Others
deine a plantation mode of production as being a variety of the capitalist
mode (Delle 2014, chapter 13). he assumption of these contributors is that
each form of economic organization should be diferently named with a
distinct mode. Ensor (chapter 6), citing Patterson (1986), calls such distinctions “forms of production” within a single mode. If modes of production
are deined as the all-encompassing political, economic, social and ideological manner in which surplus production is organized and deployed,
then a variety of economic strategies can be subsumed within an overarching mode. Each mode of production can contain a variety of means and
relations of production so that seasonal variations of resource extraction,
the tools used, and the social relations employed can change (and/or coexist). herefore, to some degree, the number of modes recognized depends
on whether one is inclined to be a lumper or a splitter. Regardless of these
inclinations, each contribution in this volume engages the mode of production framework to better understand how past societies were organized
through the deployment of surplus labor.
Whatever value this collection of essays provides will not be derived
from this introductory chapter. Instead, the utility of modes of production
depends on whether new insights can be provided through their use. We
therefore hope you agree that the value of this framework is contained in
the essays that follow. We also hope that these papers provide an openended invitation to engage with the classical Marxist tradition generally
and, in particular, with a mode of production framework.
proof
Acknowledgements
his essay has beneited from detailed and thoughtful comments of Tom
Patterson.
Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology · 21
Notes
1. Trigger (1993:174–178) provides a succinct introduction to the archaeological implications of neo-Marxism, deined largely by the rejection of Marx’s idea that economic
relationships form the basis of cultural change.
2. Niche construction theory has been used by archaeologists to examine small-scale
societies (Smith 2007, 2011) but is equally relevant to more complex ancient pluralities. In
fact, a Marxist niche construction theory could be deined as the economic adaptation to
a culturally constructed political niche. hat is, the main existential threat driving human
evolution is not getting enough to eat but getting on with others.
3. Dunn (1982:12) argues that the term mode of production refers only to the economic
base and that ‘”order” is the broader term that Marx used to incorporate both base and
superstructure. While this may be correct, it is not how the term has been used (see Jessop
1990 for a good introduction). We employ mode of production to necessarily incorporate
both the social organization of labor and corresponding political, jural, and other ideological elements that constitute the superstructure (Wolf 1982:74–75).
4. Vulgar materialism was used by Friedmann (1974) to describe what today we would
call economic or ecological reductionism, that is, that environment, ecology, or economy
dictates cultural form. Such vulgar materialism includes today’s cultural materialists, cultural ecologists, selectionists, etc., who place the engine of cultural change external to
human society. Because cultural evolution is assumed to be driven by forces external to
human society, it is therefore external to human control. Among other things, this has the
efect of naturalizing the status quo and absolving those that exploit the labor of others.
Vulgar materialism is contrasted with the materialism of the classical Marxist tradition
that we advocate, where both base and superstructure are dialectically linked. Operating
within environmental and technological constraints, this historical materialism posits that
cultural evolution is driven by the social cleavages (and related interests) within society.
Again, among other things, those exploiting the labor of others create forms of consciousness that support this economic arrangement. Whether these new forms of consciousness
are false or not, their creation does not alter the fact that economic interests generate
justifying ideologies (Rosenswig, chapter 7).
5. As Haldon (1993:53) notes, such nonmaterialist redeinition of Marxism “does not
help us to see either how the relations of production, appropriation and distribution of
social wealth are achieved, nor how the production, accumulation and redistribution of
surplus wealth is integrated into a process of social reproduction of the society in question
as a totality.”
6. As Trigger (1993:175) points out, Jack Goody (1980:17) uses the term vulgar idealism
to describe French structural Marxists such as Godelier (1977, 1984), who rejects Marx’s
core proposal that economic relations are the cause of change and instead argues that
politics, kinship, and religion organize the relations of production. his is the position that
Sahlins (1972) popularized in the English-speaking world, and it is addressed at greater
length below.
7. he Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is arguably Marx’s ([1998][1869])
most substantive work with an extended application of his materialist theory of history
to understanding the 1848 French coup. Anyone inclined to argue that Marx’s analytic
proof
22 · Robert M. Rosenswig and Jerimy J. Cunningham
framework was economic reductionism cannot have read this analysis, which is rich in
historical detail and its exploration of the role of ideology in political drama. However, as
Marx argues, political intrigues conceal the class struggle and so must be stripped away to
truly understand history (see Tomba 2013).
8. To criticize the ethnocentric orientalism of calling a mode of production “Asiatic”
(Said 1979:153–157) is precisely what Stalin did at the 1931 Leningrad conference when
the term was stricken from twentieth-century communist theorizing (Currie 1984). his
was part of the reason why Wittfogel (1957:2–3) opted to drop the term but maintain the
idea of total state power that “Asiatic” had been employed to denote. Hindess and Hurst
(1975:180), among many in the latter part of the twentieth century, critiqued the ethnocentrism of the unfortunate word choice. However, to use the racialization of concepts and the
Western-centrism of nineteenth-century scholarship as a justiication for the dismissal of
analytical ideas behind the label, as Blanton and Fargher (2008:8–10) recently have, displays a lack of historicism. As Currie (1984:263) notes, “he rejection of the term, however,
does not necessarily entail negation of the mode.” Anderson (2010:208–224) has recently
documented how Marx’s sympathies lay squarely with those resisting European colonialism and explicitly responds to Said’s critique (Anderson 2010:17–20).
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