ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a discussion of the relationship between voice, heterarchy and collective action, and additional concepts that feature prominently in both theories. Heterarchy Theory was introduced into archaeology as a way of understanding the sociopolitical organization of western Eurasian Iron Age societies. In Iron Age, Roman, post-Roman and Medieval Europe, the heterarchic assembly institution persisted even after Roman collapse, carried forward in the successor states specifically to give continuity in troubled times. The archaeological theories of Heterarchy and Collective Action share many concepts and principles, but the impetus for Crumley lay along different lines than Richard E. Blanton et al. Most archaeological studies of heterarchy involve detection of several institutions within a society, working both separately and cumulatively to order that society without privileging any single sector. In the Iron Age, these are typically a “warrior” or military hierarchy, a religious system often incorporating a judiciary and a public assembly and/or legislative political body.
