Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewRituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States Edited by Joanne M.A. Murphy. London: Routledge 2021. Pp. 242. $160. ISBN 9780367230265 (cloth).Guy D. MiddletonGuy D. MiddletonNewcastle University; [email protected] Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn G.M. Schwartz and J.J. Nichols’ edited volume After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies (University of Arizona Press 2006), Diane Chase and Arlen Chase contributed a useful chapter in which they used four “frames” to analyze what changed and what did not in the period of the Classic Maya collapse, borrowing from literature on organizational theory. Frames, they suggested, could help provide multiple perspectives on an organization, or in their case, a civilization in transition. Murphy’s book, rather than retracing arguments about what collapsed and what caused collapses, further extends and diversifies the literature on collapse by adopting the frame of ritual as a means of exploring collapse and transformation. This is an interesting and useful approach and this book is certainly a positive contribution to the literature on collapse and the aftermath of collapse.There is plenty to attract readers in the 11 diverse chapters of the book. The first, by Murphy, introduces the concepts and content of the book. Greece is covered in the next three chapters, with Florence Gaignerot-Driessen covering the transition from Late Bronze to Early Iron Age on Crete and Murphy examining the same period at Pylos on the mainland. Rebecca M. Seifried covers the Mani in the first and second millennia CE. The Americas are represented in chapters 5–7: Donna J. Nash and Patrick Ryan Williams looking at Wari, Ronald K. Faulseit and colleagues at Oaxaca, and Nicola Sharratt at Tiwanaku. The transformation of chiefdoms into states in East Africa is discussed by Chapurukha M. Kusimba in chapter 8, while in chapter 9 Srikumar M. Menon describes the history of temple building in southern India, linking it to the political stability of the state. Chapter 10, by Gyles Iannone and Michael Aung-Thwin, addresses classical Myanmar. In the final chapter, Gary M. Feinman sets the topic in a theoretical context. I discuss only a selection of the chapters of the book here.Murphy’s introductory chapter provides a useful and fair summary of research on the subject of collapse and how it has developed since the 1970s, including how it has grown from a focus on finding explanations to considering the period after collapse as well. She draws on classic and recent literature, including her own work on rituals in archaic states. The reader is reminded that collapse is part of a process and not simply an event, which it is always useful to point out. She also reminds us that many researchers have found that collapse seems to be something tied especially to ruling and elite culture. Moving to the grist of the book, Murphy introduces the relation of ritual and religion to collapse. Ritual and religion can promote social cohesion but can also be a fracture point in society. Thus, religion can appeal to people in times of trouble and can shore up states that are failing, fragmenting, or are weakly integrated. Ritual practices can be continued or abandoned in times of collapse and transition. This introduction also provides a helpful summary of the chapters of the book.Gaignerot-Driessen makes a compelling case for transformation of ritual in Crete and its continued importance from the era of the Knossos palace and its collapse, through the Postpalatial period, down to the emergence of city-states such as Dreros in the seventh century. After the fall of Knossos, local elites may have played a more prominent social role in Crete, and a new settlement pattern emerged, with coastal sites abandoned in favor of inland upland sites. She points to the presence of new social organization with communal buildings and freestanding cult buildings with benches in the Postpalatial Late Minoan (LM) IIIC period. The sanctuaries contained clay tube stands for offering bowls, clay plaques to be hung from the walls, and “goddesses with upraised arms.” Of the last, Gaignerot-Driessen argues that these were votive offerings rather than cult figures; they represent a shift from cult controlled or monopolized by palaces and their elites to communal cult in which more people could participate and represent themselves in the cultic space. After the abandonment of these settlements, clay figures with raised arms, though not identical, continued to be made into the proto-Archaic period, and there are new benched cult buildings in different locations, such as the one at Kako Plai. On this site, there was continuity from LM IIIC, with the bench building constructed in the Protogeometric and in view until the fifth century BCE. Meanings may have changed, but ancient sites and symbols remained active and significant.Moving to the mainland, Murphy’s own chapter discusses what happened at Pylos after the destruction of the site ca. 1200 BCE. She proposes that as the palace had embedded itself in the life of the region, palace-sponsored feasting and ritual increased, and the focus on tombs for ritual decreased. In the immediate Postpalatial period, where the palace area is mostly abandoned, there is some evidence for limited reuse of some nearby tombs, but this did not last. Murphy’s argument that the area around and near the palace lost its ideological significance—so that burying people in the area did not successfully convey any claimed legitimacy or status—is an interesting one. It contrasts with what happened in and around other former palaces such as Mycenae and Tiryns. Later on, Murphy points out, Mycenaean tombs away from the palace area did become a focus for cult. It may be that family groups were attempting to connect themselves with the past to promote themselves in the present, and this may be linked to the popularity of epic poetry and its heroic ideals. Both Gaignerot-Driessen and Murphy’s chapters provide very informative and detailed perspectives on two areas of the Aegean in the years around the ca. 1200 BCE collapse.Menon’s well-illustrated chapter provides almost a history of southern India from prehistory to the end of the Vijayanagara state, focused on temple building in the context of dynastic change and collapse. In this case, collapse refers precisely to the ending or changing of imperial superstructures imposed on areas and not to the existence of complex society generally. He argues for an evolution from more communal ritual activity and building in prehistory toward state-sponsored temple-building practices associated with ruling dynasties. Stupas and temples, Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu, first appeared in the Early Historic period, 500 BCE–500 CE, along with literacy and the first empires. Temple architecture then developed continuously over the subsequent centuries, even when ruling dynasties changed, with novelties possibly introduced to help build a successor dynasty’s own identity.Two case studies, a very short one on Banavasi-12000 and a longer discussion of Hampi, the Vijayanagaran capital, serve to demonstrate Menon’s point that temple building flourished in stable periods but tailed off in periods of state or dynastic collapse. Banavasi-12000 was a key part of the state of the Later Chalukyas in the 11th and 12th centuries. During this period, royal-sponsored temple building was common at the royal administrative center of Balligave. However, when central power decreased, such building projects largely ceased and local rulers began to build temples at their own centers. At Hampi, following the defeat of the Vijayanagaran army in January 1565, many temples were destroyed, most belonging to the Vaishnava affiliation, which were associated with the Vijayanagaran rulers. The temples that survived were mostly of the Saiva affiliation; surviving Vaishnava temples were converted to Saiva. The suggestion here is that imperial and “popular” religion may have differed, suggesting a disjunction between the two broad groups of elites and people.The ideas presented in Menon’s chapter could provide interesting and suggestive analogies for understanding cases of purely archaeological change in prehistoric cultures. It is also important that examples from the complex history and culture of Indian states and empires are brought further into discussions of collapse, in addition to discussions focused on the prehistoric Indus culture.Kusimba’s chapter is also important in its discussion of radical change, as per the title of the book: not just collapse, but rather the formation and maintenance of states. The chapter, which focuses on eastern and southern Africa, is informative not only for telling us about these areas and their cultures specifically but also helpful in that it provides pertinent ways of seeing other cultures. Kusimba argues that state formation happened through the cooperation of ritual, technical, and managerial experts. These included leaders, who were able to attract people partly through ritual, and people with particular skills, such as rainmakers and smiths, whose knowledge was ritualistic, guarded, and mysterious.Within a context of increasingly settled populations with agriculture and cattle farming, as well as growth in the mining, processing, and circulation of precious metals, widening societal disparities in wealth appeared. The new systems of wealth creation and regional, then international, trade required managerial expertise as well. With the interplay of these factors, state societies emerged. Leaders then attempted to maintain power by means of persuasion and coercion, which included rituals that justified this new world and their positions. In these increasingly unequal societies, there may have been more exploitation and a greater threat of violence; certainly, the smaller-scale, communal societies in which leadership could be situational rather than institutional had disappeared. Whatever the nature of these hierarchical societies, pre-existing and new ritual networks seem to have played a role as a binding factor as states expanded.The volume ends with a chapter by Feinman in which he sets out to develop “an overarching conceptual platform that serves to frame questions concerning comparative relationships between collapse and ritual” (205). He reviews some of the key literature on collapse, emphasizing how such studies have, by and large, come to recognize collapse as a political process—not an apocalyptic wiping out of the population or an end to the greater cultural tradition that states were embedded in. Following this line of thinking, it then becomes important to understand what it was that collapsed: which of the many interlinked parts of that political unit broke down or survived. Ritual is one of the key areas to consider, in and of itself, but especially in its linkages to other parts of society, and in the way it modulates human relationships.One of the most interesting parts of this chapter is the discussion of aggregation and disaggregation. Societies are constructed from a range of relationships between people and these change from the circumstances of small groups of mobile hunter-gatherers to sedentary urban populations. As societies grow in scale, ritual can help as a factor that binds people together in the absence of face-to-face relations. Shared ritual action has psychological effects on participants and can help promote a common identity and frame of reference. As much as it can bind, ritual can also be used to construct differences between groups. Disaggregation is the less studied area, but is where collapse studies focus, and this is where the study of ritual can really contribute to our understanding of what was happening. This is a useful framing of the theme of the volume because by anchoring discussions on ritual, aspects of the interrelations at different levels and scales within societies can become more visible.This book is a must-read for students of collapse. In viewing collapse through the important social, institutional, and political lens of ritual, it reveals a fruitful avenue for further research and for describing and explaining aspects of collapse. It is a lens that allows us to focus on various levels and parts of a society in collapse. As with many academic books, it is perhaps too expensive for students to buy, but university libraries should add it to their collections. The hardback volume is nicely produced, and several chapters are well illustrated with clear and helpful black-and-white figures, including maps, site plans, and photographs. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 126, Number 1January 2022 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 893Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/718062 Views: 893Total views on this site HistoryPublished online November 11, 2021 Copyright © 2022 by the Archaeological Institute of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.