THE POWER OF RITUAL IN PREHISTORY: SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE ORIGINS OF SOCIAL COMPLEXITY - BRIAN HAYDEN

This was a pretty fascinating book with a pretty dark view of human history and nature. Unlike most anthropology books, this one does not focus on a particular society or time or place, instead it seeks to establish a trend visible across almost all societies and in all times and places. Obviously, this a very tall order and out of necessity, Hayden cannot be an expert on every one of the cultures he is citing. Therefore, the bulk of the book is made up of literature overviews, mostly by continent, but also by time, where he seeks to summarize the various ethnographic research on secret societies in places as disparate as the Northwest coast of America to central Africa. This part was pretty fascinating, especially if you already know something about these areas and have always wanted to know more. The parts about the Native Californians as well as the various groups in West Africa were particularly interesting to me. This book was already quite long, over 500 pages, so we don’t get too much discussion about how the various ethnographers, some of whom are writing under conditions of direct colonization, came to know the facts they are presenting about groups that are, by definition, secret. For instance, much is made of the Poro society’s human sacrifice, which is certainly true on some level, such sacrifices play into Liberian politics in the late 20th century, but their ubiquity and commonness as reported in the 30’s and 40’s has a bit of a “thugee” mythology too me. It seems like something the British would play up to justify their occupation and the barbarity of their victims. More engagement with those questions would have been interesting, as well as more direct ties into modern western society. The idea that elites in various societies gather together to reinforce their power through terror and trickery, well, that seems pretty salient to me. As Hayden puts it in the concluding chapter, “Secret societies make the most sense as surplus-based strategies created by ambitions aggrandizers to concentrate resources and power in their own hands” and it’s hard to not see this same dynamic at play in our world. Sadly, our elites don’t seem to have the beautiful masks and elaborate quasi-public rituals (unless one believes Eyes Wide Shut, I suppose) that seem common among these sorts of sodalities. This book is a good reference book, it would be helpful to dip back into it when reading about some other aspect of the cultures surveyed to remind oneself of the secret society elements, it’s a bit repetitive read back to back. I could have done with more theory and speculation and less surveys of anthropological data, or, better yet, have these two elements split into two books. However, overall, it’s a pretty compelling and interesting way to think about the ways these sorts of groups influence society and just how common they are.