Anthropologists have long noted correlations between changes in sociopolitical complexity and religious organization. Whether these correlations are causally linked or not and—if they are—in what direction the causal arrow points are questions that have been debated for just as long. In this volume, Brian Hayden argues that in the case of transegalitarian groups and secret religious societies, correlation does indicate causality, and that changes in secret societies drive developments in broader forms of complexity. In this dense and ethnographically rich exploration of secret societies, Hayden dissects these unique religious organizations and their roles in sociopolitical evolution. Although these groups were the focus of considerable anthropological attention in the late 1800s and early 1900s, there has been considerably less focus on them since then. Hayden argues that the importance of secret societies has been at best interpreted in strictly functional terms by prehistorians, and at worst, secret societies have been overlooked entirely.
Hayden defines a secret society as “an association with internal ranks in which membership, especially in upper ranks, is exclusive, voluntary, and associated with secret knowledge” (p. 8). Other distinguishing features of these groups are that they involve the appropriation of surplus production, the concentration of that surplus and secret knowledge in the hands of those at high ranks in the society, sacred ecstatic experiences, and the strategic deployment of violence (or threats of violence) to ensure the acquiescence of peoples both within and outside of the ritual sodality. Hayden derives this characterization from a detailed examination of cross-cultural, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric accounts of such societies.
After an introductory chapter, the volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 includes five chapters describing secret societies in the New World, including the Pacific Northwest, California, the American Southwest, the Plains region, and the eastern United States. Part 2, composed of three chapters, explores secret societies in the Old World: Oceania, Central Africa (very briefly), and West Africa. Examples of ritual organizations Hayden includes in these summaries are the Northwest Coast Hamatsa, the ‘Antap and Kuksu of California, Katsina groups in the Southwest, Midewiwin societies of the Plains and Eastern Woodlands, Suque and Tamate societies of the New Hebrides, and West African Poro, Sande, and Egbo groups. It is helpful that many of these chapters have “overview” callout sections that offer summaries of the rich ethnographic data provided. The final part of the volume includes two concluding chapters. The first explores the archaeological correlates of secret societies and presents some possible prehistoric examples. Identifying secret societies in the archaeological record is understandably difficult, and Hayden recommends a polythetic approach that arrives at probabilistic rather than deterministic statements. His examples of possible secret societies come from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic of Europe, Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, the pre-pottery Neolithic in the Middle East, prehistoric North America (the U.S. Southwest, California, Northwest Coast, and Mesoamerica), South America (Chavín de Huántar), Jomon-period Japan, Neolithic China, and Guam. A final chapter begins by reviewing the important sociological, psychological, ideological, and economic characteristics of secret societies and then dives into theoretical matters.
Hayden emphasizes the agency of secret society members and the self-serving motivations of those members in accruing both surplus production and political power. In doing so, however, he significantly de-emphasizes the agency of nonmembers and theoretical approaches that employ system-serving, communitarian interpretations of ritual societies. The pictures he paints are of conniving secret society members who intimidate and bully nonmembers, and of secret societies as not functioning to “ameliorate social stresses or to better integrate communities” (p. 356). What is lost, to my mind, is the reality that in order to affect the move toward greater sociopolitical complexity, secret societies must simultaneously promote both community cohesion (however illusory it might be) and establish institutionalized authority structures within the group. Ritual organizations and practices are able to do so by virtue of their ability to transmit multivocal representations of community that are acceptable to most community members while simultaneously establishing a small number of individuals within positions of decision-making authority.
I have some other quibbles with the volume. The depth and geographic extent of the ethnographic accounts of secret societies is quite variable. The chapters on Central Africa and the Eastern Woodlands are very brief in comparison to other chapters. A mere three pages on cofradias and caves in the Maya region added to a lengthy discussion of Katsina ceremonialism is apparently enough coverage to title the chapter “The American Southwest and Mesoamerica.” There are no accounts of secret societies in South America or vast sections of Asia. Equally disappointing is the woefully underdeveloped index, which hampers the use of the ethnographic data contained in the volume. However, the detailed information about those secret societies that Hayden reports is a strength of the work. Likewise, the focus on data of relevance to archaeologists, especially material correlates, despite the tendency of ethnographers not to focus on these things, is a selling point for the volume. I completely agree with Hayden's final admonition that “secret societies need to be looked at in new ways” (p. 372). This book does that, with a richness of data that will make it a key resource for archaeologists interested in these sorts of ritual societies.
