secret societies (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hayden.

Caves have been recognized as important prehistoric ritual sites for well over a century. Yet, archaeological discussion of the rituals conducted in caves has rarely gone beyond the platitudes that they were locations for contacting the spirits, invoking powers of fertility, or burying the dead. This paper attempts to place the ritual uses of many caves in a more specific ritual context by documenting the ethnographic ritual use of caves by secret society members and relating this to some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hayden. Suzanne Villeneuve.

Secret societies are one of the most under-theorized and ignored aspects of prehistoric societies in archaeology, yet they may be pivotal in understanding major developments in sociopolitical complexity in the past. Probable prehistoric examples of secret society remains include the elaborately painted caves of Upper Paleolithic France, the communal structures or caves of the Early Near Eastern Neolithic (Gobekli Tepe, Jerf el Ahmar, Nahal Hemar, and others), and the kivas and caves used in the...