Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 13, No.

2, June 2006 (

C 2006)

DOI: 10.1007/s10816-006-9002-4

The Materiality of Social Power:

The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective
William H. Walker1,3 and Michael Brian Schiffer2
Published online: 20 June 2006

This paper explores the materiality of social power relationally through study of
social interactions with artifacts. Specifically, it is argued that acquisition of an
artifact instantiates social power by imposing interactions on groups taking part
in that artifact’s life-history activities. We introduce the “performance-preference
matrix,” an analytic tool for systematically studying the effects of such acquisition
events on activity groups. The use of the performance-preference matrix is illus-
trated through an example: the acquisition of electric-arc lights for lighthouses in
the 19th century. Suggestions are offered for analyzing culture-contact situations
and for handling singularized artifacts such as heirlooms and monuments.
KEY WORDS: social power; social theory; material culture; technology and society; performance
characteristics.

INTRODUCTION

Social power is a construct much employed across the social sciences and
humanities and, like “culture,” it sports a plethora of definitions and theoreti-
cal intonations (e.g., Barry, 1976; Henderson, 1981; Mann, 1986; Stewart, 2001;
Wartenberg, 1992; Wolf, 1990; Wrong, 1979). We join a rising chorus of schol-
ars that laments the dearth of attention to artifacts in conventional social theory
(e.g., Attfield, 2000; Buchli, 2002; Gell, 1998; Glassie, 1999; Latour, 1993, 1999;
Meskell, 2004; Miller, 1987, 2005), particularly studies of social power insuffi-
ciently grounded in the materiality of human life.
This paper, therefore, theorizes social power in relation to the people-artifact
interactions that comprise activities (cf. Preston, 2000:41–45; Shackel, 2000:233–
234). Concretely, we propose that events of artifact acquisition materialize social

1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 80003.
2 Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721.
3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New
Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 80003; e-mail: wiwalker@nmsu.edu.

67
1072-5369/06/0600-0067/1

C 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
68 Walker and Schiffer

power. A case study of 19th-century electric illumination in lighthouses intro-

duces the performance-preference matrix, an analytic tool for assessing social-
power relationships in instances of artifact acquisition. We conclude by elu-
cidating several implications of our formulations for analyzing culture-contact
situations and for handling singularized artifacts (sensu Kopytoff, 1986) such
as heirlooms and monuments. For purposes of this paper, “artifact” is defined
broadly, in material terms, to include any humanly made or modified object, de-
vice, structure, place, or system and is used more or less interchangeably with
technology.

ON SOCIAL POWER: SOME PRELIMINARIES

Most commonly, “social power” is taken to mean that individuals having

privileged social identities can exercise their will or exert “power over” others
(sensu Giddens, 1993:118). And so it is said that rulers and chiefs have “the ca-
pacity to control and manage the labor and activities of a group to gain access
to the benefits of social action” (DeMarrais et al., 1996:15). More generally, it
is believed that all status differences correspond to differences in social power
(cf. Sassaman, 2000:150). That is, parents maintain some control over their chil-
dren, police affect the perambulations of pedestrians, and clergy can command
parishioners. These kinds of characterizations illuminate the organization of nor-
mative behavior in all societies, for none lack identity-based inequalities of social
power.
Social power is also sometimes differentiated according to various spheres
of action where it is exercised, such as economic, political, and judicial. Although
these distinctions are useful for some projects, they do not acknowledge that social
power can also be construed relationally in terms of people-artifact interactions,
phenomena that crosscut all spheres of action. The move of regarding social power
as all-pervasive resonates with trends across the academy to abandon analytic
units based on traditional spheres of action and Western cultural categories (e.g.,
Foucault, 1973; Gell, 1998; Latour, 1993; Munn, 1986; Pollard, 2001:317). The
recognition that objects have power leads to all sorts of creative renderings of the
relations between people and artifacts.
We believe it is necessary to rethink basic sociocultural constructs and to
reformulate research questions in material terms. In making these moves, we
note the valuable contributions of scholars who maintain that artifacts have
politics (Winner, 1985, 1986) and social lives (Appadurai, 1986), and require
that we situate consumption behavior within social processes (Douglas and
Isherwood, 1996; McCracken, 1988; Miller, 1995a,b; Miracle and Milner, 2002;
Wilk, 2001). The hope is that, by refurbishing sociocultural constructs and ac-
knowledging the centrality of artifacts in all human action, archaeologists can
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 69

contribute to building new anthropological theories and models (e.g., Bradley,

2000; Meskell, 2004; Pollard, 2001; Schiffer and Miller, 1999; Walker et al.,
1995).
A few examples illustrate the modest progress made to date. Unsatisfied
with conventional theories of communication based on language, Schiffer and
Miller (1999) have crafted a fully general theory that highlights the roles arti-
facts play in all modes of human communication—including language. Likewise,
Walker (1995, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002) has reframed discussions of religious prac-
tice to emphasize the employment of ritual technologies. In addition, Whittlesey
(1998) and Zedeño (1997, 2000) have set forth frameworks for studying the ma-
terial dimensions of territories and landscapes. And Hayden and colleagues (e.g.,
Dietler and Hayden, 2001), drawing upon extensive ethnoarchaeological research
in southeast Asia, are modeling the material correlates and social consequences of
feasting behavior. Morrison and Lycett (1994) also stress the importance of ma-
terial correlates in their discussion of the difference between ideological claims
to power and actual power at Vijayanagra. Of particular relevance to the present
paper is Nielsen’s (1995) work on the materiality of social power, which lays a
foundation for the approach taken below.
Nielsen (1995:49) defines social power in terms of human practice “as the
ability of actors to pursue goals” by acquiring and deploying “resources (objects,
information, and other people’s actions).” By focusing on an actor’s power to mo-
bilize resources according to his or her “position in the social structure” (1995:49;
see also Joyce and Winter, 1996:33–34), Nielsen highlights the relational na-
ture of power. Once deployed in pursuit of an actor’s goals, artifacts—especially
architecture—have “multiple and often unintended effects. . .on people’s behav-
ior” (Nielsen, 1995:53). Indeed, Nielsen (1995:54) goes on to claim “that every
artifact and material cultural attribute has specific and, to a certain extent, pre-
dictable effects upon social relations.” Thus, social relations are reflected in, and
consequentially affected by, for example, the capacity, accessibility, segmentation,
and functional differentiation of particular structures. Nielsen specifies the social
correlates of these attributes in some detail, and concludes with a case study on the
architecture of a pre-Hispanic community in the Argentinian Andes. He counsels
readers to engage in further “Studies of the active role played by material culture
in the formation of power relations” (1995:66).
Nielsen in this work demonstrates the possible contributions that a relational
approach to power can make to archaeological studies of the role that architecture
plays in reproducing and structuring social relations. His analysis is a useful
starting point for theorizing the materiality of social power; it remains for us to
construct generalizations that apply to all artifacts, not just architecture. Before
turning to this task, we present relevant theoretical premises and fundamental
analytic units, which constitute the ontological context for materializing constructs
such as social power.
70 Walker and Schiffer

A MATERIAL FOUNDATION

We insist, along with scholars interested in practice-oriented approaches (e.g.,

Bourdieu, 1977; Gell, 1998; Miller, 2005), that human life “consists of ceaseless
and varied interactions among people and myriad kinds of things” (Schiffer and
Miller, 1999:2, emphasis in original). Indeed, in ethnographic settings the only
phenomena directly observable, at least in principle, are people and artifacts
interacting. Needless to say, one cannot observe an economy, kinship system, or
religion. Such constructs are theoretical, and thus are only indirectly related to
empirical—i.e., material—reality.
For those interested in such materiality, the observables—people-artifact
interactions—are the basis of the activity, the minimal unit of analysis, which
establishes an empirical foundation for fashioning abstract analytic units about
practice, behavior, or action (Walker et al., 1995). An activity is an aggregate of
specific people-artifact interactions of limited duration usually confined to a place,
such as feeding animal-spirit fetishes (Cushing, 1883), changing a carburetor in
the garage, or excavating a feature at an archaeological site (Yarrow, 2003). An
activity can be characterized by the following components (Schiffer, 1975, 1976):
(1) a social group (or simply “group”), consisting of one or more people, (2)
artifacts and other nonhuman interactors (cf. Latour, 1994), such as wild plants
and animals, precipitation, and mountain ranges, (3) specific interaction patterns,
and (4) particular times, places, and frequencies.
We emphasize that all human activities—from hunting rabbits to a wedding
ceremony—are composed of people-artifact interactions. Even activities that ap-
parently are exceptions, such as verbal communication, involve artifacts. Not only
do artifacts of activity and place define and signal social contexts, but artifacts such
as body modifications, ornaments, and clothing explicitly take part in the making
of meaning (e.g., Gell, 1993; Schiffer and Miller, 1999, ch. 3). In effect, the human
form as an interactor is turned into a communication technology. For example, on
the basis of a patient’s physical symptoms, a shaman infers that a malevolent spirit
has caused sickness. In both interactions—of patient and spirit, and of shaman and
patient—the patient is treated like an artifact. Similarly, psychiatrists infer a range
of individual, social, and biochemical causes from their patient’s performances
e.g., vocalizations, physical symptoms, and interactions with people and things.
Moreover, in some activities artifacts can function like persons. People at-
tribute spirits, souls, or magical energies to religious artifacts and then engage
those objects as power-laden beings (Walker, 1999). As we argue below, per-
sonifications of objects and objectifications of persons—both metaphorical and
literal—are critical to understanding how social power is often manifest relation-
ally in people-artifact interactions.
Activities can be combined to create many kinds of problem-oriented analytic
units (LaMotta and Schiffer, 2001). One versatile unit is the life history of artifacts,
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 71

which encompasses processes such as procurement of raw materials, manufacture,

use, maintenance, reuse, and deposition (Schiffer, 1972, 1976). A behavioral chain
is a fine-grained life history consisting of the entire sequence of activities in
an artifact’s life (Schiffer, 1975, 1976). Artifact life histories are employed, for
example, as frameworks for inferring past activities, understanding the formation
of the archaeological record (Schiffer, 1996), and building general models of
technological change (e.g., Schiffer, 2005a; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987, 1997; Skibo
and Schiffer, 2001). Life histories also track networks of people interacting with
artifacts and other people. Latour (e.g., 1993, 1994, 1999) and others (Callon,
1992, 1999; Law, 1994, 1999) have recognized that artifacts, people, and sets of
people-artifact relations can all be treated as social actors or actants. They have
developed actor-network theory (ANT) to explore these relations between people
and things.

Cadenas

We also define people and artifacts as interactors and highlight the sets of
social groups interacting with an artifact during the entirety of its behavioral chain
or life history (Schiffer, n.d.; Walker, 1996). This abstract unit of societal structure
has been termed a cadena, from the Spanish word for chain (Schiffer, n.d.). For
present purposes, we define the cadena to include all interactors involved in an
artifact’s life history, both people and artifacts. Although it is counterintuitive to
imagine an analytic group containing both people and artifacts that then interacts
with other artifacts, such a relational approach has certain advantages over previous
modernist formulations of human activity.
The modernist worldview depends on a number of Enlightenment di-
chotomies that assign society, nature, and religion to separate realms. Latour
(1993) notes that this modern construction requires vigilant rhetorical policing of
its boundaries. Indeed, he defines modernism as inherently contradictory. On the
one hand, it strives to purify theory of overt transgressions of these realms, as in
treating people like artifacts and artifacts like people. On the other hand, despite
the purification processes naturalized by most modern theories that appeal to em-
pirical reality, scientists and humanists alike breach these boundaries regularly.
Indeed, he argues that, by establishing boundaries that fly in the face of actual
human relations with the material world, it is easier to create hybrid thoughts
and actions that transgress these boundaries. Modern engineers design smart cars,
houses, and appliances; social scientists speak of minds and symbols; and scholars
in the humanities treat texts as if they were sentient. Yet all might be surprised by,
and decry, the consequences and ethical dilemmas posed by their creations (e.g.,
human clones, societies of artifacts, or Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel).
By treating people and objects as socially equivalent or symmetrical (sensu
Latour, 1994), cadenas highlight the fundamental fact that social power is
72 Walker and Schiffer

embodied in the material relations between people and things. Such relations
are particularly relevant when discussing groups that perceive artifacts as power
laden, often analogous to living beings—animate and possessing agency (Gell,
1998). Cadenas reveal how that power can carry through the lives of objects even
as they move between groups of interactors. In Hopi culture, for example, men
commonly wove wedding mantas of cotton in animate kivas. The kivas as well as
the weavers contributed to the power that resided in these textiles, which persisted
in activities long after they were given away in wedding ceremonies (Walker,
1999).
Cadenas vary along two important analytical dimensions: size and hetero-
geneity. Their sizes can range from one person and a few artifacts interacting
with just one artifact to thousands of people and artifacts participating in the
life histories of hundreds of objects. Cadenas also exhibit enormous variation in
social heterogeneity—overall differences in the composition of the group of hu-
man interactors from activity to activity (Schiffer and Skibo, 1997). In the most
homogeneous cadena, the very same person manufactures, uses, maintains, and
disposes of the artifact; that is, the person comprising the group is invariant across
all activities.
A pattern of moderate social heterogeneity is illustrated by the manufacture
of an artifact by one group of people and objects while its use, maintenance,
and disposal are carried out by other people and artifacts; this kind of cadena
characterizes many exchanged items.
For many industrial products, cadenas can assume an astonishing degree of
social heterogeneity. For example, in a multinational corporation making com-
puters, design teams work on individual parts; these parts are manufactured by
groups and artifacts in several nations, and the finished product may be assembled
by many groups and artifacts in another nation; it is then handled by shippers,
distributors, wholesalers, and retailers, and afterwards is acquired by consumers,
perhaps around the globe. Needless to say, there might be no overlap in the mem-
berships of the many groups taking part in these numerous and diverse activities.
Obviously, larger and more socially heterogeneous cadenas offer greater
opportunities for conflict, inequality, and the need for negotiation over relations
with artifacts. As such, the cadena—the set of people and objects specified in
relation to all of an artifact’s life-history activities—figures in our effort to discern
the exercise of social power in artifact acquisition.
If human behavior consists of people-artifact interactions at various scales,
then research questions in the social and behavioral sciences should be reformu-
lated to include a more symmetrical understanding of people and artifacts. One can
no longer be satisfied to analytically separate people (and the “social”) from their
material matrix. All human activities simultaneously involve interactions in the
life histories of artifacts and participation in cadenas. Separating human behavior
from artifacts always results in neglect of the latter. It is no wonder that even
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 73

the most thoughtful social scientists interested in power (e.g., Wolf, 2001) have
scarcely tapped the potential of material things in their efforts to explain variation
and change in human behavior.

MATERIALIZING SOCIAL POWER: THE ARTIFACT PERSPECTIVE

In considering how social power is manifest materially in everyday activities,

one might be tempted to focus on incontrovertible symbols of social power and
their immediate effects on interaction patterns. Thus, uniforms and ornaments in
military organizations enable a soldier to identify another’s rank nonverbally and
to respond appropriately (or not). In hospitals, gowns of varying styles and colors
distinguish different roles such as doctor, nurse, and orderly, thereby structuring
social interactions in that context. That artifacts playing communicative roles can
symbolize statuses, roles, and other social identities, thereby denoting normative
differences in social power and affecting interactions, is obvious not only to
anthropologists but also to people living in every society.
Although a discussion of the materiality of social power could be confined
to symbolic phenomena, such a treatment would miss the ways in which social
power is instantiated in the artifacts of everyday life, independently of their sym-
bolic functions. Building on Nielsen’s study, we begin with the general premise
that social power is the ability to affect, prescriptively and proscriptively, the inter-
actions of others with artifacts. Social power is exercised, for example, when one
group starts, stops, or precludes another group’s activity, or chooses its activity’s
artifacts. By tracing these kinds of intergroup relationships in cadenas, gener-
ally and in specific cases, one begins to delineate through artifacts a pervasive
materiality of social power.
Researchers sometimes distinguish between “structures” of power and
“actual” social power, a distinction that is especially useful in our project. Struc-
tural social power is a group’s socially defined authority to make choices affecting
the artifact interactions of others, whereas actual social power is the practices, by
one or more groups, that in fact influence a choice. Ascriptions of structural social
power are based on a group’s social identity and context. On the other hand, attri-
butions of actual social power, which are group- and choice-specific, are construed
in the present study as the anthropologist’s inferences about actual practices as
played out in cadenas of varying size and heterogeneity. (Although we choose not
to use the same terminology, we are inspired by Wolf’s [2001:384–385] discussion
of scales of power from the individual performance capabilities or characteristics
of a person to the “power that structures the political economy” on a world
scale).
A few examples can illustrate the distinction between the two variants of
social power. On the basis of structural social power one might assume, for exam-
ple, that a household head affects its members’ domestic activities, that a colonel
74 Walker and Schiffer

dictates the military activities of her troops, and that a government determines
the direction of a nation. But calculations of social power on these bases supply
nothing more than normative expectations that might be unmet because affected
groups always exercise social power and do not exist in isolation from other
sources of power. Thus, parents do not select all of a child’s at-home activities;
colonels can encounter soldiers that evade, undermine, or act without orders;
and a nation’s laws are resisted by its own citizens (religious movements, riots,
technological change), extranational forces (Internet, smugglers, armies), and un-
predictable natural processes (epidemics, hurricanes). Paying attention to human
artifact networks exposes the diversity of power that goes unrecognized in these
examples. The heterogeneity of household objects and opportunities for action,
like the complexity of potential activities and artifacts in military institutions and
nation-states, overwhelms structural approaches. Clearly, groups that are defined as
structurally subordinate to others are able sometimes to offer resistance—indeed,
can exercise agency—because they inhabit cadenas that offer more heterogeneous
performance capabilities. Thus, a group’s actual social power, perhaps emerging
through conflict and negotiation, must be inferred on an activity-by-activity basis
at appropriate scales through explicit identification of the networks of people and
artifacts we call cadenas.

ACQUISITION PROCESSES

That social power is the ability to affect, prescriptively and proscriptively,

the interactions of others with artifacts is, we suggest, a premise pregnant with
implications and interpretive possibilities. An obvious example is the use of taboos
and sumptuary rules, including dietary restrictions and warning signs, to preclude
certain people-artifact interactions. In the present project, however, we explore
only the instantiation of social power through artifact acquisition. Acquisition
denotes an event: a potential user group comes into possession of an artifact
through a mechanism such as purchase, exchange, loan, gift, inheritance, theft,
or employer’s fiat. Acquisition results from a choice ostensibly made by one
group of the cadena, the “selector,” which we stipulate–somewhat arbitrarily–
possesses the social power to make the choice. (Acquisition should not be equated
with consumption as defined by Douglas and Isherwood [1996:37], for their def-
inition is based on free choice, and as such is a special case within a much
larger array of acquisition events.) It should also be kept in mind that, in a
large-scale cadena, a “selector” may mean many people acting in concert with
artifacts.
Crosscutting the differences in acquisition mechanisms is a fundamental
commonality: a choice is founded on a forecast of one or more of an artifact’s
performance characteristics. Performance characteristics are the behavioral ca-
pabilities of people, artifacts, and other phenomena that enable the constituent
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 75

interactions of an activity to proceed, thus facilitating its forward motion (Schiffer

and Miller, 1999, ch. 2; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987, 1997). In addition to famil-
iar performance characteristics that permit mechanical, thermal, and chemical
interactions—e.g., the bending strength of a steel I-beam, a storage pot’s heating
effectiveness, the resistance of copper to corrosion by seawater—one can delineate
performance characteristics related to human senses. Sensory performance char-
acteristics contribute to the ability of objects to interact symbolically in specific
activities, such as the American flag at a football game (visual), a roasted turkey
at Thanksgiving (visual, olfactory, gustatory), and the first clarinet in a concert
(acoustic). In every case, of course, symbolic interactions depend on an artifact
having appropriate sensory and other material performance characteristics. Sen-
sory performance characteristics, which also facilitate aesthetic interactions, help
the researcher to frame behavioral questions about cognitive phenomena (Schiffer
and Miller, 1999; cf. Nielsen’s [1995:52,54] “social performance characteristics”).
Performance characteristics are defined contextually in relational (activity-
or interaction-specific) terms; they are not intrinsic properties of people or artifacts
even though material and biological properties of interactors do affect many per-
formance characteristics (on the distinction between properties and performance
characteristics, see Schiffer, 2003).
Building on insights of Winner (1985, 1986), Foucault (1977), Bijker (1995),
Lansing (1991), Nielsen (1995), and others, we now come to the key premise that
links social power to artifact acquisition. To wit, in all but totally homogeneous
cadenas, the acquisition of an artifact redounds on the activities of a cadena’s
groups. A few familiar examples make this premise more concrete. In a house-
hold, one person may obtain utensils for serving and eating food, but these very
same objects are used by all household members. Likewise, in an automobile
repair shop, the hydraulic lift and computer diagnostic equipment, purchased by
the shop’s owner, are used by the mechanics. Similarly, in large bureaucracies
such as universities, corporations, and government agencies, employees work in
buildings and offices chosen by others and use “standard issue” vehicles, furniture,
telephones, computers, forms, and even pens. The extreme example is the prison,
where the selector’s acquisitions affect virtually all of an inmate’s activities (Fou-
cault, 1977). Indeed, the loss of freedom occasioned by incarceration is perhaps
best expressed as an inmate’s legal inability to effect nary an acquisition. Very
young children also inhabit a material world not of their own choosing. Likewise,
hospital patients are required to interact, often quite intimately, with specialized
objects that materialize the social power of administrators, insurance companies,
physicians, nurses, and physical therapists.
Clearly, when one group imposes an artifact on another, the exercise of
actual social power can amount to oppression. Yet, power is not only about op-
pression and resistance (Brown, 1996), for in principle the imposed-upon group
could accept with equanimity or even embrace the changes. Indeed, it is possible
76 Walker and Schiffer

that diverse power-related processes can operate simultaneously, as Brown and

Fernández (1991) found out in their study of the assistance Asháninka Indians
provided Marxist guerillas in a 1960s Peruvian insurgency. That study initially
framed the acceptance of the guerillas and the associated cadena of guns, killing,
and destruction as a straightforward case of repression and external domination.
Brown, however, on later reflection realized their “resistance” focus obscured the
complexity of actual power relations. “With the benefit of hindsight, I regret that
we let an inspiring story of resistance distract us from a more thorough analysis
of the specific content of Asháninka prophecy” (Brown, 1996:731). A prominent
Asháninka shaman inferred that the insurgent leader was a messiah come to fulfill
a millenarian prophecy and this mobilized the people to embrace the fight. There-
fore, Brown (1996:731) concludes that “the Asháninka who inserted themselves
into the conflict were not only responding to external challenge but also advancing
their own vision of existential redefinition and or transcendence.”
One cannot assume a priori an identity between imposition and oppression,
nor can the withdrawal or prohibition of an activity be equated automatically
with deprivation. As we describe below in our case study of lighthouses and
other examples (steel axes, ritual artifacts), negative social consequences can arise
whether or not the acquisition of an artifact is voluntary or imposed.
In heterogeneous cadenas, there is always a potential for conflict over ac-
quisition decisions because each group has its own performance preferences. It
is a rare artifact or cluster of artifacts whose performance characteristics match
the performance preferences of every group (Schiffer, 1992, ch. 2).4 As result,
many groups may influence the selector and affect the artifact choice. Thus, in
exercising actual social power, children do affect their parents’ purchases, auto-
mobile mechanics can influence a shop owner’s acquisitions of equipment, and on
rare occasions university faculty have a voice in choosing their office furniture. It
should be noted that sometimes there is ambiguity about who is the selector.
A cadena’s groups can influence the selector’s choice through a variety of
overt and covert practices, including pouting and sulking, offering advice, whining,
withholding intimacy, the silent treatment, coercion, persuasion, bickering, not
carrying out activities, offering tradeoffs, working more slowly, and actual or
threatened violence. Also, these practices, singly and in combination, can be
repeated over long periods. Clearly, choices—as embodiments of actual social
power—are often the precipitate of a complex, drawn-out, and nuanced negotiation
process that might be little expressed in discourse. What is more, we doubt that
participants could always furnish a reliable and accurate account of how a choice
was made.

4 Moreover, because of technological constraints, the performance preferences of any one group may
be incompatible. Thus, in traditional, low-fired cooking pottery, it is virtually impossible to achieve
the user preferences of high impact strength and excellent thermal shock resistance (Schiffer and
Skibo, 1997).
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 77

Consequently, we believe it is impossible to know with certainty which

interactions, by which groups, influenced specific artifact choices—even in ethno-
graphic settings. That is why we contend that a researcher’s claim about the
exercise of social power in a given case is an inference. But these inferences can
be well founded if we make use of relevant evidence and employ appropriate
analytic tools. The starting point is the recognition that, in the acquisition of any
artifact, its performance characteristics may differentially satisfy the performance
preferences of the cadena’s groups. We can, in principle, infer the cadena’s con-
stituent groups and their performance preferences along with diverse contextual
factors. Given this foundation, it should be possible to compare the performance
preferences of a cadena’s groups with the performance characteristics of the ac-
quired (or nonacquired) artifact. This establishes a basis for hypothesizing which
groups apparently exercised actual social power by affecting the choice. At the
very least, one can assess whether that choice ostensibly privileged or oppressed
specific groups. (In offering such assessments, one should be mindful that a given
group, such as artifact users, might itself consist of subgroups. Thus, both den-
tists and patients are “users” of dental drills, but each group has rather different
performance preferences.)

STUDYING SOCIAL POWER THROUGH ARTIFACTS:

ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CASE STUDIES

To assist in making the diverse comparisons needed for studying the man-
ifestation of social power in acquisition events, the investigator can employ a
modified version of the analytic tool known as a “performance matrix” (Schiffer,
1995, 2000, 2004, 2005b; Schiffer and Skibo, 1987). A performance matrix is a
table listing the performance characteristics of one or more artifacts in relation
to life-history activities and (or a cadena’s groups). A performance matrix can be
constructed in many ways, depending on the investigator’s research interest and
the particulars of a case. For studying social-power relationships, we introduce
the performance-preference matrix, which displays the performance preferences
of a cadena’s groups in relation to one or more artifacts.
One constructs a performance-preference matrix as follows: (1) specify an
artifact or artifacts, (2) identify relevant cadena groups, including the selector,
(3) list each group’s preferred performance characteristics with respect to relevant
activities, (4) denote with a plus (+) or minus ( − ) sign whether the artifact
satisfies each of the performance preferences, and (5) arrange the rows of each
group so as to highlight clusters in the columns of plusses and minuses. Any such
patterns indicate which groups—if any—were advantaged or disadvantaged by
the acquisition decision.
Like any modeling exercise in science, this work combines subjective
and objective processes. Identifying relevant artifacts, groups, and performance
78 Walker and Schiffer

preferences is a subjective modeling process and the product is apt to vary from in-
vestigator to investigator. Once created, however, a performance-preference matrix
can be objectively examined, criticized, and if necessary refurbished. Its strength
lies in the investigator successfully corralling and synthesizing as much of the
available information about the artifacts, cadena groups, and relevant activities as
possible.

Lighthouse Illuminants

In illustrating the construction and interpretation of a performance-preference

matrix, we draw upon a historical case: the competition between electric and oil
illumination in 19th-century lighthouses. This case is suitable because the pro-
cess is well documented in the historical record, involves diverse groups hav-
ing differing performance preferences, and has been closely studied (Schiffer,
2005b).
Throughout the 19th century, lighthouse lamps burned some kind of hydro-
carbon oil (sperm whale, lard, rapeseed, or kerosene). Even so, major maritime
nations, including France, England, and the United States, monitored the devel-
opment of new illumination technologies and tested promising alternatives to oil.
In the late 1850s and early 1860s, tests of the electric-arc lamp in England and
France showed that this technology could function as a lighthouse illuminant.
The acquisition of electric-arc lighting presents an intriguing pattern: al-
though the technology had been brought to market in the 1860s, England and
France were the only nations to install it in appreciable numbers. By the mid-
1890s, when usage of electric-arc lamps peaked, these two nations had acquired
around 20 examples, usually very bright lights in prominent locations. A few other
nations had one or two lights, but most had none. Indeed, oil lamps continued to
be emplaced in nearly all of the hundreds of new lighthouses built during the
1860–1895 period.
In explaining this pattern of differential acquisition, Schiffer (2005b) sug-
gested that the electric light was more than a navigation aid, for it also served as a
political technology. Because these prominent and distinctive lights were visible
to mariners and navies of all nations as well as to ocean-going travelers, electric
lights denoted in material form a nation’s commitment to modernity and under-
scored its contributions to cutting-edge science and technology. Particularly for
traditional adversaries France and England, the electric lighthouse signified scien-
tific and technological prowess at a time when, as imperial powers, these nations
were competing with each other on many fronts. Moreover, France and England
were also in competition with other industrializing nations, especially the United
States and Germany, which were making significant contributions to science and
technology, especially theoretical and practical electricity. The few nations that
acquired an electric light or two (including the United States) could conspicu-
ously advertise their mastery of electricity at a time when other new electrical
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 79

technologies, such as the telegraph, telephone, and trolley, were transforming, or

promising to transform, daily life.
The electric light produced by far the brightest and whitest light, but relative
to oil lamps it had performance deficiencies in initial costs, ease of installation
and operation, ease of repairs and maintenance, ease of administration, and so
on. Many of these shortcomings stemmed from the need to install, operate, and
maintain an electrical generator and the steam engine to drive it. Steam engine
boilers required a constant supply of fuel (coal or coke) and water, which usually
had to be transported by lighthouse tenders (specialized ships that periodically
resupplied lighthouses) to remote locations inaccessible by road or rail. And,
because illumination technologies had to be highly reliable, electric lights required
two backup systems: another complete generator and steam engine and as well as
a conventional oil lamp.
The selectors in most nations were governmental or quasi-governmental
lighthouse boards. After the first experiments with electric lights in England and
France, whose results were published in technical reports and journal articles and
became widely known, the lighthouse board of any nation could make acquisition
choices informed by unusually reliable forecasts of the competing technologies’
utilitarian performance characteristics. Clearly, once a lighthouse board had in-
stalled an electric light, other groups on the light’s cadena had to take part in the
activities that this choice imposed.
Patterns in the performance-preference matrix (Table I) suggest which groups
were advantaged or disadvantaged by the electric light’s acquisition. Namely,
lighthouse keepers and tender crews had to drastically change their work practices,
for operating and maintaining electric lights required new skills and complex
interactions with many new artifacts. Indeed, to enable the performance of these
activities, a steam engineer and a stoker often had to take up residence in the
lighthouse along with the keeper. Mariners’ activities were also affected: electric
lights had greater penetrating power (a benefit under conditions of poor visibility),
but also sometimes cast confusing shadows and could briefly impair night vision.
One may also infer that electric lights disadvantaged tender crews because of the
added supplies that had to be handled during servicing visits. Moreover, when a
lighthouse board chose to install an electric light, it incurred a large increase in
administrative costs and hassles, which were offset only by symbolic performance
characteristics. In acquiring an electric light, then, a lighthouse board placed added
burdens on lighthouse keepers and tender crews while simultaneously increasing
its own burdens, perhaps made tolerable by accolades from political leaders,
including Napoléon III, and greater international prestige.
What can be inferred about the exercise of actual social power in the acqui-
sition of electric lights? In these cases, the lighthouse board’s structural social
power, as the selector, translated directly into actual social power, for no other
groups seem to have influenced the choice. The acquisition of an electric light was
80 Walker and Schiffer

Table I. A Performance-Preference Matrix for Electric and Oil Illuminating Technologies Em-
ployed in Lighthouses During the Late 19th Century
Performance characteristics of
lighthouse illuminants
Performance preferences of relevant groups Electric Oil

Lighthouse Board (Selector)

Symbolizes commitment to modernity + –
Symbolizes cutting-edge science and + –
technology
Furnishes an effective light + +
Furnishes a reliable light + +
Symbolizes a concern for maritime safety + +
Inexpensive to acquire – +
Easy to install – +
Easy to administer – +
Easy to repair – +
Easy to operate and maintain – +
Economical to operate and maintain – +
Tender Crew
Easy to store supplies – +
Easy to load and unload supplies – +
Lighthouse Keepers
Easy to operate and maintain – +
Easy to repair – +
Mariners
Furnishes an effective light under most + –
conditions
Furnishes a reliable light + +
Does not cast confusing shadows – +
Does not harm night vision – +

clearly an imposition on keepers and tender crews; indeed, a case could also be
made that the choice oppressed these two groups. This should not be surprising;
after all, lighthouse boards in most nations were elite organizations, often staffed
by political appointees, which lacked representation from keepers or tender crews.
Members of these latter groups were treated simply as laborers who were expected
to perform their duties as dictated by the technologies that the lighthouse boards
imposed. Workers profoundly unhappy with their situation could simply resign,
for any other form of resistance was essentially futile. In acquiring electric lights,
lighthouse boards heavily weighted the symbolic performance characteristics that
could serve their nation’s political interests, notwithstanding the oppressive ef-
fects of the acquisition on keepers, tender crews, and even on the administrative
activities of the lighthouse boards.
However, in the hundreds of cases in which electric lights were not acquired,
one might argue that forecasts of that technology’s poor performance in relation to
the activities of keepers and tender crews might have affected the choice. But this
argument is weak because the disadvantages that accrued to the lighthouse board
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 81

itself might have sufficed to dissuade acquisition. In these cases of nonacquisition,

uncertainties remain in inferences about the exercise of actual social power.
The performance-preference matrix itself rests on a host of inferences that
cover a large range of actual and potential interactions between a technology
and specific groups. We emphasize that there is no formulaic way to make these
inferences, for the investigator is obliged to exploit and integrate varied lines
of evidence, and apply his or her creativity every step of the way. Despite the
inherent subjectivity in this research process, another investigator can craft an
alternative performance-preference matrix for the same case and challenge the first
investigator’s inferences and interpretations. This kind of replicability-in-principle
should be a check on egregiously incorrect interpretations. At the very least,
the performance-preference matrix appears to furnish a tool for systematically
investigating the effects of an acquisition event on a cadena’s groups.
We noted above that imposition—e.g., the selector’s acquisition of an artifact
with which other groups of a cadena must interact—obviously implies inequality
but does not necessarily equate with oppression, either in judgments of the affected
groups or the investigator. An interesting example is furnished by the transmission
of artifacts under conditions of very slow technological change. At times in past
societies, as well as in some modern societal institutions such as monasteries,
people get along without protest using artifacts whose acquisition they did not
influence. This comes about when enculturative activities transmit activities along
with associated artifacts over which no one apparently has a choice. One group, the
selector, simply acquires (makes or obtains) the traditional artifacts and imposes
them on other groups. Because alternative technologies are lacking, the acquisition
of the artifacts is often naturalized (or supernaturalized), as in “That’s the way
we’ve always done it." We suggest that, in such a context, when the selector has
but one customary “choice," the artifact’s performance characteristics become
de facto performance preferences for all cadena groups. It could be said that the
cadena exhibits collective performance preferences.
The process of naturalizing artifacts and their performance characteristics also
adds another dimension to the understanding of acquisition events in contexts of
changing technologies, as in the lighthouse case where alternatives were available.
We propose that selectors, who make forecasts about a technology’s utilitarian and
symbolic performance characteristics, often personify objects both literally and
metaphorically. Thus, in the lighthouse example, electrical technology personifies
a spirit of national modernity. This metaphorical animism was naturalized by
appeals to a prophetic interpretation of scientific progress. Indeed, it would have
been difficult at that time to choose a technology that personified a nation’s progress
more archetypically than the technological control and application of the brightest
artificial light through electrical means. British and French lighthouse boards,
representing the two greatest imperial powers of that time, could scarcely resist
investing in some electric-arc lights, with their outstanding symbolic performance
82 Walker and Schiffer

characteristics, despite the obvious hardships that would be imposed upon other
groups.
In contact, acculturation, and colonial situations, indigenous groups are ex-
posed to an array of new artifacts, which may be acquired through various mecha-
nisms. These acquisition choices sometimes have disastrous effects on a cadena’s
groups—even on the structure of an entire society—because they can alter exist-
ing social-power relationships and create new ones. The paradigmatic example of
this process is Lauriston Sharp’s (1952) study of how the Yir Yiront, an aborigi-
nal Australian group, underwent social disintegration following the acquisition of
steel axes. (We have not reworked Sharp’s account, but merely acknowledge that
the situation he described permits other renderings and interpretations.)
Prior to the early 20th century, the Yir Yiront had practiced hunting and
gathering using stone and wood technologies, including polished stone axes. Stone
for the axes came from quarries 400 miles away and was obtained by older men, in
exchange for spears, from partners in long-standing trading relationships. These
exchanges took place during important and festive tribal gatherings. Men made,
maintained, and stored the axes, and were treated as their owners. Women and
children used the axes, for they were a critical technology for making other tools,
gathering and processing firewood, and erecting huts.
To obtain an axe, a woman deferentially asked permission to borrow it from
a husband or an appropriate kinsman. According to Sharp, stone axes were at the
nexus of customary social relationships that embodied the actual power of the
men to make this critical technology available to others: “Women and children
were dependent on, or subordinate to, older males in every action in which the
axe entered” (Sharp, 1952:76). Further, the “repeated and widespread conduct
centering on the axe helped to generalize and standardize throughout the society
. . . sex, age, and kinship roles, both in their normal benevolent and in exceptional
malevolent aspects, and helped to build up expectancies regarding the conduct of
others defined as having a particular status” (p. 77). Moreover, “The stone axe was
an important symbol of masculinity” (Sharp, 1952:78), the gender that in so many
activities possessed structural social power. This artifact and the social relations
that surrounded its life history were sanctified by myths, the totemic ideology
that chartered the present as a continuation of a past world in which marvelous
ancestors had founded the clans. Not surprisingly, as one totem of the Sunlit Cloud
Iguana clan, the stone axe, infused with spiritual power, played a pivotal role in
ceremonies. The diverse interactions that took place during the life history of stone
axes gave rise, we suggest, to collective performance preferences. But that would
soon change.
With the advent of missions in the 20th century, steel axes became available to
the Yir Yiront in large numbers. These axes were acquired, not by older males, who
avoided the missions, but by women, younger males, and even boys, who received
the new tools as gifts or in exchange for labor. Older men, their structural power as
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 83

selectors undermined, no longer monopolized the distribution of axes. The result

was “a revolutionary confusion of sex, age, and kinship roles, with a major gain in
independence and loss of subordination on the part of those able now to acquire
steel axes when they had been unable to possess stone axes before” (p. 84). And,
because the steel axe was not mentioned in totemic myths, this new technology
lacked a defined locus in the clan system and was devoid of spiritual qualities.
The Yir Yiront failed to create new myths to naturalize the behaviors involving
the steel axe, nor did they develop new collective performance preferences. The
results were catastrophic. Indeed, Sharp chronicles the resultant disintegration
of trading relationships, ceremonies, totemic ideology, and eventually Yir Yiront
society, which he argues was set in motion, in large part, by the acquisition of steel
axes by newly empowered groups.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The Yir Yiront case is an extreme example of how new acquisition patterns,
especially in contact, acculturation, and colonial settings, can have major—and in
this case dramatic—effects on behavior that ramify throughout a society. In other
cases, when supernaturalizing forces (gods, spirits, ancestors) are undermined,
societies experience revitalization or millenarian movements. We see in these
processes a link between the emergence of new selectors and radical shifts in
actual social power. In some cases, such changes will be followed by the rise of
new collective performance preferences and the creation of new traditions.
Traditions are maintained, especially in more complex societies, by the con-
struction of large-scale communal or public structures—e.g., platform mounds,
temples, and pyramids. We suggest that it might be useful to regard these artifacts
as the original mass media. In having these structures built, priests and kings, as se-
lectors, placed heavy weight on certain visual performance characteristics, thereby
prescribing what all members of a community and visitors had to view. Viewers of
these political technologies were reminded of the immense structural social power
of the elite, which contributed to the reproduction of elite-maintaining ideologies
(DeMarrais et al., 1996:16; Nielsen, 1995:55–56). Modern industrial societies are
no different: factories, skyscrapers, houses of worship, sports arenas, capitols, stat-
ues, and other monuments similarly function as mass media (in addition to other
utilitarian and symbolic functions they might perform). In some cases, these large
and visually distinctive structures reinforce and perpetuate social inequalities by
imposing, on all who pass by, particular visual interactions that intone structural
social power; in other cases, the impositions are more benign, serving as symbols
of community pride and contributing to its integration. And, of course, the same
structure or monument may comfort some people while also oppressing others.
Kopytoff (1986) has suggested that certain artifacts have singularized life
histories, in that their participation in certain exchange spheres is prescribed or
84 Walker and Schiffer

proscribed. Walker (1995) has applied this important insight to ritual technolo-
gies, arguing that artifacts employed in religious rituals require specific modes of
disposal when they are no longer serviceable. Thus, “ceremonial trash” is treated
differently from ordinary trash. Typically this comes about because the artifacts are
regarded as being animated like people. People are not simply thrown away but are
handled reverently out of respect or fear of their animate force (e.g., souls, ghosts,
mana). And, we suggest, this is also the case for any singularized artifact. Indeed,
the perceived animacy in singularized objects is a “residue” of the selector’s social
power, which affects its interactions with other groups. These artifacts are treated
in a highly conventionalized, deferential manner because people attribute to them
spiritual characteristics of the selector or others whom the selector is believed to
represent, including supernaturals (Walker, n.d.).
That artifacts can retain a residue of social power helps us to understand why
many heirlooms and mementos, which utterly lack religious uses and exchange
values, can also be singularized, occasioning special treatment. For example,
bestowed by an ancestor (the selector), an heirloom retains some residue of that
person’s social power and, even when all uses (symbolic and utilitarian) have
ceased, is not discarded like trash. Likewise, people continue to carefully curate
certain gifts long after they no longer perform their original functions. Thus, many
an American adult owns a beat-up teddy bear, doll, or similar childhood memento
that, by virtue of possessing some residual social power of the giver, is protected
from normal discard activities.
On the other hand, a residue of social power sometimes marks an artifact for
destruction, as in instances of kratophany (Walker, 1995). Kratophany is the violent
destruction of dangerously powerful persons or things such as witches, discredited
priests, and kings and their associated religious or political technologies. Not
surprisingly, mass media such as a statue of Stalin or an Aztec temple become
the focus of revolutionary changes in polities or religions. These behaviors can be
interpreted as follows: members of the new regime attempt to destroy the residues
of social power present in these artifacts for revenge and to prevent their use in a
counter-revolution. Destruction (and or burial) of these structures and monuments
is also required because, otherwise, they will continue to broadcast unacceptable
messages to all viewers.

CONCLUSION

Social power is one of the most important and multivalent constructs in the
academic world. During the past few decades, especially, it has served anthropolo-
gists well. Indeed, no modern researcher interested in social processes—regardless
of subdiscipline or theoretical framework–can do without it. In advancing the
present project, we have argued that the exercise of social power has material
consequences far beyond the identity-based inequalities that many artifacts come
The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective 85

to symbolize. Indeed, every event of artifact acquisition instantiates social power

in its effects on the activities of a cadena’s groups.
To assist in studies of the social power embodied in acquisition events,
we introduced the performance-preference matrix. This analytic tool enables re-
searchers to make explicit comparisons between the performance-preferences of
relevant groups and the performance characteristics of given artifacts. Such com-
parisons indicate which groups were advantaged or disadvantaged by particular
acquisition events, and lead to hypotheses about which groups might have exer-
cised actual social power by influencing the choice. We also explored additional
implications of an artifact-based conception of social power for studying culture-
contact situations, and for handling singularized objects such as monuments and
heirlooms.
By elaborating on the materiality of social power, archaeologists can, we
believe, contribute to the development of new bodies of social theory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Alex Carroll, Lisa Lucero, Barbara Mills, Axel Nielsen, Scott
Rushforth, Monica L. Smith, and James M. Skibo and for very useful comments
on earlier drafts. Reviews by Catherine Cameron, Thomas Levy, and Mark Lycett
also provided insightful suggestions and criticisms.

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