Negotiating Poise in a Multi-Hierarchical World: An Archaeological Exploration of Irrigated Rice Agriculture, Ideology, and Political Balances in the Coevolution of Intersecting Complex Networks in Bali (original) (raw)

2003 UCLA Anthropology PhD dissertation. This dissertation considers the origins, development, and function of complex social organization in Bali, Indonesia. It contributes to theory and method in and beyond the field of archaeology. Ethnographic depictions of Balinese social organization show a pluralistic collectivism pattern consisting of many function- specific corporate actor groups with intersecting memberships, most functioning also as temple congregations. This heterarchy also features many cases of concentric integration, since village, state, and irrigation management groups are each arranged into separate nested hierarchies. Drawing on work by Lansing and others, I posit that the geographic and technological growth of wet rice agriculture on Bali’s dissected slopes shaped the coevolution of the various hierarchies, favoring the independence of water management groups (subaks) and their self-organization into a yield-enhancing “complex adaptive system.” This may have limited legitimacy and finance mechanisms available to extractive polities, leading to development of the expressive negara form of the 19th century. Evaluation of this diachronic model begins by examining some of the early historical data; completion will require further archaeological investigation of changes in the agricultural economy and in patterns of social organization. As groundwork, I attempt to identify ideological strategizing meant to create and maintain solidarity, alliance, autonomy, and relative power among villages, states, and subaks. I stress the role of material culture in promulgation of ideological statements, since effective communication and control of ideas requires materialization (attachment to objects or events). In modern Bali, processions and courtyard temples employ indexical aspects of multiplex signs to link places and social groups. Such observations provide ethnoarchaeological support to analyses at two localities in Tampaksiring, Gianyar Regency. At Tirtha Empul, the past and present roles of the Manukaya inscription show how objects are used and reused to define relationships. Similarity and spatial proximity among large monuments at Gunung Kawi signify a strong statement of affiliation; the site thus reveals both the authority of the 11th century state and the limits of its power. These limits may have resulted from power negotiations among predecessors of the groups constituting today’s multicentric social system.