ABSTRACT
What role do leaders have in the creation of history? Traditional archaeological approaches to this question typically focus on humans and what they want, contrasting hierarchy and heterarchy as the core ways to contextualize different forms of power. This chapter brings anarchist archaeologies into conversation with elements of assemblage theory and posthumanism, namely the twin concepts of potestas and potentia. Through this conversation, the chapter explores the role of non-humans in leadership, politics, and power. The chapter considers how power balances might shift between humans and non-humans, how human leadership might respond to the non-human world, and how non-humans are recruited to support and sustain different forms of power. The chapter centers on case studies from the Andean city of Tiwanaku and a Bronze Age burial landscape in Britain. It concludes by arguing that archaeologists can create alternative understandings of leadership and power that have untapped potential to rethink the present and the future.
