The earliest known public architecture in the New and Old World is usually interpreted in ritual terms. While the appearance of these structures has generally been assumed to be related to an increased importance of religious sentiment, my research with transegalitarian societies indicates that new types of religious institutions emerge and are probably related to the construction of these facilies. The new religious institutions were most likely promoted by early aggrandizers as part of their strategies to concentrate surplus, wealth, and political power in their own hands. These new religious institutions include secret societies, lineages with an emphasis on ancestor worship, and perhaps elders’ councils. Caves may also have served as ritual sanctuaries for secret societies as early as the Upper Paleolithic. Documenting the ethnographic and archaeological occurrence of the buildings and caves related to these institutions and their ethnographic relationships to aggrandizer strategies that result in social complexity has become one of my main research interests in recent years.

Mousterian burial

Current Projects:

Archaeology at Keatley Creek
The Uses of Upper Paleolithic Caves

Publications:

In press. Hayden, B., and Ron Adams.

“Ritual structures in transegalitarian communities.” In William Prentiss and Ian Kuijt (Eds.) Prehistory of the Plateau. University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City.

2003 Hayden, Brian

Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: The Prehistory of Religion. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, DC.

1997 Owens, D’Ann, and B. Hayden.

“Prehistoric rites of passage: a comparative study of transegalitarian hunter-gatherers.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16:121–161.

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