On not seeing like a state: rethinking ancient Honduras (The Gordon Childe Lecture for 2023)

Abstract

This article exemplifies the way that moving from perspectives on inequality to questions of the exercise of freedom can change archaeological interpretation. Using a case study from Honduras, where conventional models suggest that social evolution stagnated at the level of chiefdoms, the article draws on recent advances in theories of anarchic social organisation to rethink the data relating to occupation during the equivalent of the Maya Classic and Terminal Classic periods (c. 500–1000 ad). Settlement pattern data from northern Honduras have previously been interpreted as exemplifying heterarchy, understood as the expression of multiple overlapping hierarchies, in distinct aspects of social life. Most settlements conform to the needs of farming, with small towns that are roughly evenly spaced providing opportunities for rural populations to participate in seasonal ceremonies, ball games and possibly markets. Considering the structuring role of freedom to move, to refuse commands and to create new forms of social life enables understanding underlying dynamics that the heterarchy model was missing. It allows for an account of the growth and decline of settlements as outcomes of strategies by leading families and refusal of these by the broader population. Central to these strategies are the roles of visual media, specifically art works, through which social values were created among this politically anarchic population.