Abstract

In this article, I advance understanding of the political dimensions of ritual in archaeology. Ritual practice has been commonly identified within a dualistic schema in which common or everyday activities are set against (and apart from) those practices that have special significance. Conventionally, the latter belong to the realm of ritual in which the sacred, the mysterious, the symbolically significant and the uncommon become institutionalized. Such a rationale constrains ritual within the core economic, social and ideological mechanisms that constitute social structures. After a brief discussion of traditional approaches to ritual in the Andes, I present an alternative interpretation grounded in a relational approach to ritual. Exploring contemporary archaeological contexts in Andean north-west Argentina, I attempt to bridge this divide by emphasizing that ritual is part of social performance.