Gordon R. Willey, Styles and State Formations

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STYLES ND ST TE FORM TIONS

Gordon R. Willey

The author's earlier thoughts about Mesoamerican and Peruvian h orizon styles and regional stylistic div ersity have been givennew meaning by the conce pts of corpor ate and exclusionary states as these have been formulated byR. E. Blanton andcolleagu es. Their synthesis should op en the way for further dialogue concerning the processes of state formation as these canbe obser ved in the archaeological record.

Las c onsider acione s originale s del au tor en cuanto a 10s estilos d e 10s horizontes culturales en MesoamC rica y el Peru', y la diver-

sidad de estilos regionnles, han sido redimensionadas en su sign$cado porR. E. Blanton y sus cole gas en cuanto a 10s con cep-tos de estados corpora tivos y exclusionistas. Su sintesis deb e abr ir paso hacia didlogos mds profundos sobre 10s proceso s deformacidn de 10s estados, tal com o pueden s er observado s en el registro arqueo ldgico.

Agood many years ago, I published a paper,The Early Great Styles and the Rise of the

Precolumbian Civilizations (Willey 1962).It dealt with the Olmec and Chavin horizon styles intheir respective Mesoamerican and Peruvian settings.What engaged my attention was the occurrence ofearly powerful art styles like these--each unique inits own iconographic themes and stylistic render-ings-linking together the several regional culturesof theirrespective areas. It was my argument that thiskind of horizonal phenomena had occurred only inthese two areas of the Precolumbian New World,areas that later were to develop and sustain condi-tions of sociopolitical and cultural complexity towhich we can properly attribute the term civilization.With reference to this term, I realize that the word

civilization is often used more broadly or loosely,but I had in mind its classic definition as this is

derived from its root civitas-the city-with itsaccompaniments of urban population clusters, greatpublic buildings, and monumental arts. Such a com-plex of definitive features characterizes theMesoamerican and Peruvian areas, at least in theirClassic and final Precolumbian phases, but no otherculture area in the ancient Americas.

This was an empirical observation, a recognitionof a pattern in the data of New World prehistory, that

I thought interesting and suggestive; however, I madeno attempt to explain the pattern. To be sure, possi-ble explanations were implied. For instance, did anintercommunicative belief system or ideology,implied by the widespread art styles, have some-thing to do with promoting civilizational complex-ity through increasedmultiregional nteractions? Wasareawide unity of an ideological, economic, andpolitical kind a prerequisite for civilization? Itappeared to me to be something worth thinkingabout. But my colleagues of those days appeared todisagree with, or not to be very interested in, myobservations. I cannot recall any published reaction,but, in conversation, some associates indicated to methat my focus on Olmec and Chavin art appeared tobe a reactionary attempt to place the vital motors ofcultural change in ideology rather than in the mate-rial realm where they belonged. Others adopted an

attitude that would be compatible with what we nowthink of as political correctness about ethnic mat-ters, along the lines of Just because my Indiansdidn't live in cities and didn't build great high pyra-mids doesn't mean they weren't as creative or asnice as those who lived in Mesoamerica and Peru.For the most part, though, no one was particularlyinterested in my observation.

Although I didn't grieve over this disinterest or

ordon R Willey Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138

Latin American Antiquity, 10 1), 1999, pp. 8 6 9 0Copyright 1999 by the Society for American Archaeology



8OMMENT

neglect unduly, apparently I could never let go ofthe idea, for almost 3 years later I returned to it ina paper, Horizonal Integration and Regional Diver-sity: An Alternating Process in the Rise of Civiliza-tions (Willey 1991 . This time I expanded theoriginal theme by arguing that Mesoamerica andPeru not only were characterized by their respectivepossessions of the early Olmec and Chavin multi-regional horizon styles, but that these areas were alsoalike in displaying later horizon styles. Beyond that,each was further characterized by alternating peri-ods of regional stylistic diversity between the hori-zon style phenomena. To briefly summarize: InMesoamerica, the Olmec horizon style of the ear-

lier part of the Middle Formative period was fol-lowed by the numerous regional styles of the LateFormative and earlier Early Classic periods; this eraof regional diversity was then succeeded by theTeotihuacan horizon of the later Early Classic andMiddle Classic periods; in turn, this horizon gaveway to the subsequent stylistic regionalism of theLate Classic and Early Postclassic periods; andfinally, there was the Aztec horizon of the Late Post-classic period. In Peru, this alternation of horizonsand stylistic regionalism began with the Chavin or

Early Horizon; this was followed by the regionalstyles of the Early Intermediate period; these, inturn, were succeeded by the Huari-Tiahuanaco orMiddle Horizon; this then gave way to the manyregional styles of the Late Intermediate period; andfinally, there was the Inka horizon.

In this second paper, I went on to offer the ideathat this alternation of unification and diversity maybe a clue to processes crucial in the rise of statehoodand civilization. Did shared ideologies of the hori-zonal epochs prepare the ground for the extension ofstate power, in contrast to the geographically limitedpolitical domains of the epochs of regional diversity?In making this case for such an alternation of hori-zons and regionalism as a causal factor in the rise ofcivilization, I had recourse to what might be consid-ered supporting negative evidence from anotherpart of the New World. This was the IntermediateArea --or that temtory lying between the Mesoamer-ican frontier and northern Peru. The IntermediateArea-in sum, the coasts and highlands of what is

today lower Central America, Colombia, andEcuador-lacks the phenomena of horizon styles.While sharing in the subsistence practices, technolo-gies, and many other cultural traits of Mesoamerica

and Peru-indeed, its achievements in plant cultiva-tion and the development of ceramics antedate thoseof either Mesoamerica and Peru (see Willey 1996 forareview of this issue)-its Precolumbian culture his-tory is an unrelieved story of small territorial stylis-tic entities. These entities would appear to representpetty chiefdoms. Often their rulers exercised the sortof power that is reflected in rich grave goods andcostly retainer-burials. Although stone sculpture andpublic building is present in some localities, there isno evidence of the monumentality and urbanizationthat characterizes Mesoamerica and Peru.

Such was my argument. An alternation of peri-ods of intensive interregional communication with

periods of regional diversity was a key factor in thegrowth of civilizational complexity. Would this play-ing around with styles and statehood attract any atten-tion this time? While I lay no claim to credit forplanting ideas, I was pleased to see that my 199 article struck a responsive note in a paper by Richard E.Blanton, Gary Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski,and Peter M. Peregrine, A Dual-Processual Theoryfor the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization,that appeared in Current nthropology in 1996.Where I had been doing little more than making an

observation of a diachronic pattern in the archaeo-logical data, with only vague suggestions of the cul-tural and social forces that had been at work, Blantonet al. set about attempting to explain just what hadhappened in Mesoamerica to leave such a pattern inthe record.

It is their thesis that a simple unilineal evolution-ary sequence of band-to-tribe-to-chiefdom-to statecannot handle what transpired in ancient Mesoamer-ica. They offer, instead, what they designate as adual-processual theory of evolution, one in which

two kinds of political economy are competing. Oneof these they term the exclusionaIy, the other thecorporate.

Exclusionary statelets, or protostates, are cen-tered on individual or family-lineage rulers. In thissense, they are more like chiefdoms, from which,indeed, they developed. Individuals, in their searchfor wealth and power, determine the forms of theexclusionary state, and ancestral ritual legitimatescontrol of society by a limited number of high-rank-

ing individuals. In contrast, corporate states tran-scend the scale of family-lineage rhetoric. Instead,themes of remote gods or cosmic renewal are empha-sized. This allows for an incorporation of disparate



88 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 10 No. 1 19991

ethnic groups into the body politic and legitimatesappropriation of the resources of these groups.

Addressing Mesoamerica with this dichotomousmodel in mind, Blanton and colleagues concede thatthe Olmec art style may signal a sort of proto-incor-poration process that was taking place in western andsouthern Mesoamerica during the Early and MiddleFormative periods. They qualify this, however, bypointing out that in some regions an exclusionarystate strategy is reflected in Olmec portrait monu-ments of rulers and other indications of lineagerhetoric. In their opinion, it is not until the rise ofClassic-period Teotihuacan that a true corporate stateand political economy was established on the

Mesoamerican scene, one whose power persistedfrom circaA.D. 300 to 750. A number of things indi-cate the corporate state strategy. For one, there wasa very clear de-emphasis of individual entrepre-neurial achievement. There are no portraits of namedrulers; instead, Teotihuacan state cults, based on cos-mological principles and glorified by monumentalpublic works, assumed prime religious-propagan-distic importance. For another, the nature of the hori-zon style radiating out from Teotihuacan, as observedin such things as the well-known tassel-headdressfeature, was much more standardized than the ear-lier distributions of Olmec horizon art. It was clearlysomething dispatched from a specific center.

Blanton et al. then go on to discuss the icono-graphic history of post-Teotihaucan Mesoamerica.They see a swing back to exclusionary political sys-tems in Epiclassic and Early Postclassic times, fol-lowed by strong expressions of the corporate statemode in the Late Postclassic with the Aztec andTarascan empires. They make the observation that

these corporate empires, like Teotihuacan, did notportray rulers in their art but, instead, gave empha-sis to the deities of rain, the sun, Quetzalcoatl, orHuitzilopochtli. This does not mean that there wereno individual rulers of importance. On the contrary,ethnohistoric accounts of these late periods attestthat there were such individuals but that the face ofthe state that was presented to incorporated peopleswas one with a wider, multiethnic appeal.

Blanton and colleagues are at pains to make thepoint that it is the duality of their dual-processual he-

ory that is important. Corporate features in statedevelopment alternate with exclusionary features.As an example, this is well illustrated by the Low-land Maya. In the Late Preclassic, there was a trend

toward corporateness, with their big major centers,their open plazas, and their cosmic imagery. In theClassic, however, the trend was in the other direc-tion, with these earlier polities being replaced by anetwork of interacting states or statelets. These werevery fragmented politically, often hostile to eachother, and with a proliferation of individual familydynasties who are commemorated in temple andtomb rt and royal inscriptions. Then, with the Post-classic, as at ChichCn Itza, rulers are difficult to iden-tify in commemorative art; instead the main focus ison the great plazas and colonnaded buildings and thepanoply of corporateness.

Blanton and his coauthors make some very inter-

esting observations about consumer goods, manu-facturing, and the development of technologies. Inmy 1991 paper, I had observed that technologicalinnovation seemed to be particularly associated withwhat I designated as periods of regional diversityas opposed to the horizonal unifications ; but theygo further than this by essaying an explanation forthis condition. They note that in the exclusionarypolitical economies here is a tight control of the pro-duction and distribution of prestige goods. In theirwords: This competitive social atmosphere is a nat-ural crucible for technological innovation (Blantonet al. 1996:12). Also, at that time productionprocesses were usually those not available to ordi-nary households. In contrast, in the corporate polit-ical economy, there tends to be a shift to goods thatare widely household produced.

I can add to their argument by noting that the par-allels to what happened in Peru are striking. Tech-nological innovation there, especially in metallurgy,was notable in periods of regional diversity, much

less so in those of Horizonal Unification. In the lat-ter there tended to be widespread dissemination ofinnovations made under the regional-r read exclu-sionary-political economies. Thus, the widespreadpropagation of tin-bronze, an earlier south highlandinvention, was achieved later under the Inkaic cor-porate state.

As is the manner of the journal, Current Anthro-pology the Blanton, Feinman, Kowalewski, andPeregrine paper was subjected to critiques by vari-ous colleagues, and all of these various comments

are worth perusing. I will not single any of them out,but a generally shared critical theme is that the exclu-sionary-corporate dichotomy may be overstressedand that the two strategies had coexisted in



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Mesoamerica for most of the time of which we havea record. In their concluding observations, Blantonet al. admit this to a degree, and I, too, would agreethat there is evidence for some coexistence; but I amstrongly on the side of Blanton and colleagues inbelieving that there is an important dialectic goingon here between these two processes and would fur-ther maintain that such a dialectic is crucial in theevolution of civilizations.

There is, on the one hand, in the exclusionaryprocess, the desire for power and prestige on the partof leaders or rulers who, in whatever ways, havegained ascendancy over their fellow members ofsociety. We have seen how this can be expressed inmany ways: through the possession and control ofluxury goods; through commemorative monuments;elaborate tombs and retainer burial; the manipula-tion of religion and religious ritual; and, through allthis, there is an emphasis on the hereditary descentof power. On the other hand, the corporate processtraces a different course in the search for and deploy-ment of power. Its basic motive is the geographicaland the multiethnic extension of political and eco-nomic power. With this process, there is less empha-sis on the individual ruler and his immediate kin, or

at least there is less emphasis in the way such a rulerand his lineage are propagandized. The symbols andthe art of the state now seek an affiliation with cos-mic beliefs and forces, perhaps looking back in timeto old widespread general heritages of belief that hadtribal sanction but not imperial power behind it.

Many interesting questions arise from theseobservations. Why, for instance, was corporate stateformation more successful in Peru-Bolivia than inMesoamerica? Contrast the geographically enor-mous distributions of the Inka horizon and empire,

as well as those of the earlier Huari-Tiahuanaco hori-zon style and possible empire, with the Mesoamer-ican Aztec or Teotihuacan corporate attempts. Whatare the reasons behind this difference? Why do thestatelets of other parts of the Americas, such as thoseof the Intermediate Area, seem to stall at the exclu-sionary level? Would societies here have gone on tocorporate attempts had they been given more time?One thinks of the Chibcha and their attempts at largerpolities as perhaps a beginning, although not verywell-developed, effort in this direction.

Another question that I find most fascinating isthe intrinsic nature of the earliest horizon styles-the Olmec and the Chavin-in Mesoamerica and

Peru. How far along had the cultures and societiesof this time moved toward a corporate political econ-omy? Certainly, there is great difficulty in visualiz-ing the several Olmec societies in the context of asingle Mesoamerican corporate state; and in Peru thesame holds true for the Chavin societies. In bothcases, the styles are rich in symbolism and iconog-raphy that suggests religious beliefs and, judgingfrom their geographic distributions, very widespreadreligious beliefs. Such beliefs would provide someof substance by which a large territorial politicalagrupement could be held together; but in neitherOlmec nor Chavin do other lines of archaeologicalevidence fully support an integrated corporate polity.

In many ways, Olmec and Chavin remind one ofthe stylistic spreads seen on simpler cultural levels,such as the dissemination of the Hopewellian bird-design imagery throughout large parts of easternNorth America in Middle Woodland times, or the

Southern Cult art that appears to have diffusedthrough much of the southeastern United States ona somewhat later Precolumbian time level. Such sym-bols must reflect at least some common under-standings shared by many peoples, quite often groupsspeaking different languages and separated from

each other by different cultures. I would think thatit is symbolism such as this that holds the potentialto be used for corporate political ends when the timeis ripe. Given more time a politically potent unifica-tion-in effect, an empire-might have arisen ineastern North America. In turn, it might then havedissolved under the assertion of regional authorities.Thus, corporate polities draw upon ancient sharedtraditions, and they rise and fall through the strug-gles between what are otherwise their exclusionarycomponents.

The basic causality behind such events remainsa question. To what degree are natural-environmen-tal circumstances causal? Was the failure of the cul-tures and societies of the Intermediate Area to movemore effectively toward horizonal unification or cor-porate polities rooted in their natural ambience? Didthe Peru-Bolivian highland and coastal environmentease the way for imperial unifications in a more pro-nounced manner than the Mesoamerican natural set-ting (see Murra 1980)? Maybe-but if so there is stilla lot that we do not know about it. Natural and mate-rial circumstances obviously must be considered aswe search for cause; nor can we ignore ideas or ide-ologies in this search, although to trace and explain



90 LATIN AMER ICAN ANTIQU ITY [Vol. 10, No. 1, 19991

Murra, J.V.them presents the archaeologist with even greater1980 The Economic O rganization of the Inka State.JAI Press,

challenges. But it is reassuring to know that there is Greenwich, Connecticut.a strong interest in pursuing such matters on the part Willey, G. R.

1962 The Early Great Styles and the Rise of the Precolumbianof a growing number of archaeologists see, forCivilizations.American Anthropologist64:2-14.example, J.E. Arnold 1997). 1991 Horizonal Integration and Regional Diversity: An Alter-nating Process in the Rise of C ivilizations.American Antiq-

References Cited uity 56:197-215.1996 Lower Central American Archaeology: Some CommentsArnold, J.E. editor)

as of 1991. InPaths to Central American Prehistory edited1997 Emergent Complexity: The Evolution of Intermediateby EW . Lange, pp. 297-303. University Press of Colorado,Societies. International Monographs in Prehistory. AnnBoulder.Arbor, Michigan.

Blanton, R.E., G. M. Feinman,S.A. K owa lewski, and P.N. Peregrine

1996 A Dual-Processua l Theory fo r the Evolu t ion o f Received February 20 1998; accepted March 31 1998; revisedMesoam erican Civilization.CurrentAnthropology37: 1-14. April 14 1998.

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Gordon R. Willey, Styles and State Formations