| Abstract: |
The development of institutionalized forms of political and economic inequality within so-called middle-range societies has become a major focus of archaeological inquiry. One road to inequality is stipulated by prestige good models. Prestige good models assume a rather straightforward, positive relationship between "elite" control over foreign objects and control over local labor, which in turn translates into differential social power. This essay examines some recent critiques of prestige good models that indicate the need for new ways of thinking about relationships between wealth, labor, and power in middle-range societies. A theoretical framework is sketched that allows for greater diversity in the positions and roles of the agents who activate human social life and that locates causation less in the activities of individual self-aggrandizers than in historically contingent "class" struggles between diverse social agents. The Chaco Phenomenon of the North American Southwest provides empirical input critical to the development and refinement of the theory.
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