The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity

The Secret

Secret societies — defined by exclusive membership, internal ranks, and control of secret knowledge — were not community-integrating institutions but power-oriented organizations used by ambitious elites to dominate communities through ideology, terror, and surplus extraction, constituting a missing link in the evolution of political complexity.

• The ‘secret’ in secret societies is not hidden membership but restricted ritual knowledge, known only to high-ranking members and withheld from both the public and lower-ranking initiates — serving as the basis for claims to supernatural power.
  • Everyone in a community typically knew who belonged to secret societies and members flaunted their initiation status through public displays.
  • Brandt (1980) observed among the Hopi that ’the secrecy was internal, not external’ — directed at lower-ranking members as much as at outsiders.
• Secret societies are defined by exclusive, voluntary membership with internal ranks, entrance and advancement fees, and secret supernatural knowledge — distinguishing them from tribal initiations (universal and compulsory) and open religious sodalities.
  • “Wedgewood (1930) defined a secret society as ‘a voluntary association whose members are possessed of some knowledge of which non-members are ignorant.’” —Wedgewood
  • Entrance and advancement fees function like pyramid schemes, providing the greatest benefits to those in upper ranks and excluding those deemed undesirable.
  • Gray areas exist where all males are initiated at entry level (as in some Melanesian groups) but far fewer access higher grades with true secret knowledge — the upper ranks constituting the functional core of the secret society.
• Secret societies only emerge among transegalitarian (complex) hunter/gatherers and subsequent agricultural tribal or chiefdom societies — never among simple hunter/gatherers or in high-culture state societies — suggesting they are a specific evolutionary stage in political development.
  • “Driver (1969) categorically states that secret societies were ‘possible only in a society with a large surplus of food and other necessities.’” —Driver
  • Secret societies occurred in areas capable of producing significant surpluses, not in stressed environments, linking their emergence to surplus-based aggrandizer strategies.
• The underlying motivation of secret society organizers was self-interest — acquiring hegemonic control over rituals, wealth, and political power — not community benefit, despite public rhetoric claiming otherwise.
  • Johansen (2004) concluded after reviewing multiple cultures that organizers sought to promote their own self-interests by creating hegemonic control over rituals that they claimed gave them supernatural powers.
  • “Simmel (1950) stated: ‘The secret group pursues its own purposes with the same inconsiderateness for all purposes outside itself which, in the case of the individual, is precisely called egoism.’” —Simmel
  • Psychological studies (Piff et al. 2012) found that upper-class individuals behave more unethically, are more likely to cheat, and have more favorable attitudes toward greed — precisely the attitudes characterizing secret society officials.
• Secret societies have the potential of linking ideologies and rituals to the acquisition of power and particularly to explain why religion or ritual has played such an important role in the emergence of more and more complex societies leading up to civilization.
• Secret societies created divisiveness and inequality rather than social integration — competing factions within communities, each using small exclusive ritual buildings, make no sense as integrative institutions but are fully explicable as competitive power structures.
  • The prevailing archaeological view that prehistoric rituals were used to integrate communities is contradicted by the ethnographic record showing secret societies as predatory and divisive.
  • If the role were social solidarity, one would expect a single large ceremonial facility per community; instead there were typically two to five competing secret society organizations using small ritual buildings.
• Acquiescence to secret society ideological claims was achieved not through genuine belief but through external pressure, enforcement, and terror — with repeated examples of doubters being killed and widespread individual skepticism documented across cultures.
  • Barth (1987) found that doctrines in New Guinea cults were mostly viewed as metaphors and not really believed in, and documented great variability in sacred knowledge even within small-scale societies.
  • Willer et al. (2009) found that beliefs not beneficial to most people can become publicly entrenched ‘when backed up by expectations of enforcement that are confirmed when one deviates.’
  • There are repeated references across all culture areas to the killing of doubters of secret society dogmas, even sons of chiefs, indicating acquiescence was forced rather than genuinely held.
• Secret societies are archaeologically identifiable through material signatures including special structures at remote or village-peripheral locations, exotic paraphernalia, evidence of feasts, sacrifices, and unusual burials — requiring a polythetic, probabilistic approach rather than any single criterion.
  • Excavations at the Keatley Creek site on the Canadian Plateau revealed small, secluded peripheral structures 100-200 meters from the main village that subsequent investigation largely confirmed as secret society ritual structures.
  • No single criterion is sufficient or necessary to identify secret societies archaeologically — the more material indicators present, the more probable the identification.
• Secret societies created supra-kinship and supra-community regional networks — interaction spheres with shared ideology, art styles, and ritual practices — that could serve as the organizational basis for political centralization beyond what kinship systems alone could achieve.
  • Ware (2014) emphasizes that ritual sodalities in the American Southwest were regional organizations often encompassing different linguistic and ethnic groups.
  • John Adams (1973) made the key point that for those at the head of kinship groups, there was no way within the kinship system to increase wealth or power — requiring the creation of secret dance societies that crossed kin lines.

Part I: The New World

The Complex Hunter/Gatherers of the American Northwest

Northwest Coast secret societies were explicitly terroristic organizations using violence, black magic, supernatural performance, and massive wealth extraction to dominate communities — with membership restricted to hereditary elites, elaborate public displays of possessed cannibals and destroyed property, and regional networks crossing tribal boundaries.

• Northwest Coast secret societies functioned explicitly as terrorist organizations, using violence, black magic, and the threat of supernatural possession to dominate communities — a purpose stated categorically by ethnographers and informants alike.
  • Drucker (1941) categorically stated that the function of secret societies on the Northwest Coast was to dominate society by the use of violence or black magic, with informants describing them as ’terroristic organizations.’
  • When dances were announced, ’the low-rank people all began to weep, for they knew someone would be murdered’ — killings for transgressions of conduct rules were prevalent.
  • Ruyle (1973) argued that the monopolization of supernatural power by the ruling class functioned to produce fear, awe, and acquiescence supporting an exploitative system.
• The key ideological claim of Northwest Coast secret societies was that dangerous supernatural power — hereditary from ancestral spirit encounters — could only be safely controlled by initiated members, justifying both their special privileges and the terror they deployed.
  • Tsimshian chiefs claimed that only they had the power to deal directly with heavenly beings, whereas such contact would make others go insane or sick.
  • Supernatural power was portrayed as dangerous (like electricity or nuclear power), but secret society members knew how to get it and use it without harming themselves.
  • Wealth and material success were portrayed as signs of spiritual favor, while powerful chiefs ‘feared no restrictions and heeded no conventions’ — characteristic of extreme aggrandizer behavior.
• Membership in the most important Northwest Coast secret societies was strictly limited to hereditary elites and wealthy chiefs, with initiation costs so enormous — sometimes tens of thousands of blankets plus coppers, canoes, masks, and slaves — that they constituted the greatest expenditure of a chief’s lifetime.
  • Full entry into the third level of the Kwakwakawakw Cannibal Society took twelve years and required a great deal of wealth, with few men able to achieve this rank.
  • At one Kwakwakawakw initiation, 13,200 blankets were given away as well as 250 button blankets, 270 silver bracelets, 7,000 brass bracelets, and large quantities of other items.
  • The Hamatsa members in particular were ‘men in the highest positions in all the tribes,’ with only chiefs eligible to enter the Cannibal Society among several groups.
• Public displays by Northwest Coast secret societies — including cannibal possession, destruction of property, biting of community members, killing of slaves, and elaborate stage magic — were deliberately staged to terrorize non-initiates while demonstrating the society’s claims to dangerous supernatural power.
  • Cannibal-possessed people ran through all houses of the village biting people, even those of high rank, or took ‘pieces of flesh out of the arms and chest of the people.’
  • Other demonstrated powers included handling fire, keeping burning coals in mouths, making rattles dance by themselves, changing water to blood, and bringing dead salmon to life.
  • McIlwraith repeatedly noted terror throughout entire villages, with uninitiated people cowering in their houses while destruction rained on their homes from ‘Cannibals,’ ‘Breakers,’ ‘Scratchers,’ ‘Bears,’ and ‘Wolves.’
• Drucker categorically states that the function of secret societies on the Northwest Coast was to dominate society by the use of violence or black magic. Accounts of some informants portrayed them as ’terroristic organizations.’
• Secret societies on the Northwest Coast operated as regional networks crossing tribal and linguistic boundaries, with members from different villages attending each other’s ceremonies, shared art styles reflecting common ritual ideologies, and inter-village enforcement of secret society rules including military raids.
  • Members of a secret society in one Bella Coola village were ‘accepted as a member in any other one,’ and serious cases of revealing secrets could be grounds for punishing raids by members from other villages.
  • Hamatsa initiations drew members, candidates, singers, and dancers ‘from all over the Kwakwakawakw nation’ for two to three weeks of ceremonies.
  • John Adams noted that for those at the head of kinship groups there was no way within the kinship system to increase wealth or power — requiring secret dance societies that crossed kin lines.
• Northwest Coast secret societies used multiple specialized locations: residential houses transformed for performances, remote wilderness locations for initiation seclusions, and isolated caves or rock shelters for storing paraphernalia and conducting especially secret meetings — a settlement pattern with direct archaeological implications.
  • Tsimshian initiates into the main ‘Shamans’’ dance series were sequestered for a month or two ‘in a hut or cave in the bush surrounded by corpses,’ while Wikeno Kwakwakawakw initiates stayed ‘in a shelter or cave… out in the woods.’
  • The Cave of the Animals in the Broughton Archipelago was used to store secret society masks and for ceremonies and initiations, and had a model displayed at the Royal British Columbia Museum as the ‘Cave of Supernatural Power.’
  • Secret societies needed at minimum four location types: venues for public displays, locations for secret meetings, locations for initiate seclusion, and isolated remote storage for ritual paraphernalia.
• Ecstatic states induced through prolonged fasting, seclusion, drumming, dancing, confrontation with corpses, and ritual ‘killing’ and resurrection were central to Northwest Coast secret society initiations — creating genuinely altered states that produced convincing performances and bound initiates more firmly to the organization.
  • Training for initiations occurred over one to four months during which initiates subsisted on starvation diets to the point of becoming ‘skin and bones,’ with deaths during long seclusion periods not uncommon.
  • Initiates were ‘shot’ or killed with quartz crystals, fell down as if dead, and were subsequently revived when the crystal was removed — a practice with parallels in both Ojibway and Plains secret societies.
• The question of actual cannibalism in Northwest Coast secret societies remains contested, but the deliberate use of human sacrifice (especially slaves) and the credible threat of cannibalism appear well-documented as tactics of intimidation central to Hamatsa Society power.
  • Boas cited several eyewitness accounts of Hamatsa initiates eating human flesh and biting pieces of flesh from people, as well as at least two cases of slaves being killed and consumed for ritual purposes.
  • Members of the Quinault Klokwalle (Wolf) Society had a reputation for killing and eating people during their secret rites, suggesting the threat — whether real or staged — was strategically employed across groups.

California

Californian secret societies — including the Kuksu, Ghost, Hesi, and ‘Antap organizations — occurred only in economically prosperous environments, restricted membership to hereditary elites through costly initiations, used elaborate supernatural performances and bear impersonators to terrorize and extract surplus from communities, and formed regional networks integrating multiple ethnic groups.

• Californian secret society cults — Kuksu, World Renewal, Toloache, and ‘Antap — emerged only in the most economically prosperous environments with bountiful subsistence, confirming that secret societies require surplus production rather than ecological stress.
  • Kroeber (1932) argued that the central Californian cult system was a ’luxury’ and only occurred in favorable, economically prosperous environments, probably originating in the Sacramento Valley.
  • Bean and Vane (1978) observed that religious institutionalization correlated markedly with economic and ecological potentials, with great religious systems occurring in the most favored environments.
• Initiation into California secret societies was a prerequisite for elite and leadership status, with political headmen typically being heads of the main secret society — making the ritual and political structures effectively identical.
  • Bean and Vane (1978) stated that initiation into religious secret societies was ‘a sine qua non for elite or leadership status’ across most California cult groups.
  • The Maidu political head was the head of the secret society; Pomo ‘chiefs’ were always members of the Kuksu Society; and Northern Maidu society leaders regulated dances, served as war leaders, and settled disputes.
• The ‘Antap Society of the Chumash used sophisticated astronomical and calendrical knowledge as esoteric power — claiming that celestial bodies governed all earthly events and that only ‘Antap members could influence them — to justify elite dominance and extract wealth from communities.
  • All power knowledge was kept secret and not shared with commoners; curing techniques and calendar knowledge were the exclusive domains of society members.
  • Hudson and Underhay (1978) noted that control of astronomical knowledge and the calendar provided great wealth and power to Chumash ‘Antap shaman/priests.
  • Misfortunes, infirmities, and death were considered retributions for disobeying the gods — an ideological construct that justified elite authority and enabled extortion under the guise of spiritual protection.
• Bean and Vane (1978) state that in most of the groups that participated in these networks, initiation into religious secret societies was a sine qua non for elite or leadership status.
• California secret societies extracted wealth from communities through multiple mechanisms: initiation fees, advancement fees, charges for cures (which members sometimes induced), fees for dances and spirit performances, levies for ceremonial feasts, and payments demanded from spectators at performances.
  • Kuksu members ‘shot’ new initiates who fell down dead, but could be revived — implying the same power could be used against others — while members reportedly induced sicknesses so that people would have to pay high prices for cures.
  • At Patwin Hesi ceremonies, the main spirit impersonator placed sticks before the chief representing each spectator, who were then obligated to pay — with spirit displeasure expressed by throwing fire around if payments were insufficient.
• Enforcement in Californian secret societies relied on bear impersonators — members wearing bear costumes who could kill at whim — as well as supernatural poisoners, public shamanic competitions demonstrating lethal power, and the killing of skeptics even when they were sons of chiefs.
  • Pomo bear shaman/warriors could kill at whim, and grizzly bear hereditary roles integrated into secret societies were reputed to kill people in the bush — intimidating anyone who resisted secret society claims.
  • Boscana (1978) stated that skeptical boys, even sons of chiefs, were killed for profaning the rituals, and that the chief could have dissenters executed through an ’executioner.’
• California secret societies formed regional networks integrating multiple linguistic and ethnic groups through required inter-community participation, reciprocal gift exchange, and the purchasing and diffusion of dances, ceremonies, and ritual knowledge across hundreds of communities.
  • “Bean and Vane (1978) stated that the Kuksu, World Renewal, and Toloache Cults ‘integrated large numbers of people into social, economic, political, and ritual networks of considerable dimensions, including many thousands of people and sometimes hundreds of communities.’” —Bean and Vane
  • The Kuksu Cult was adopted by distinct linguistic and cultural groups including the Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, Maidu, Miwok, Costanoan, Esselen, Salinan, and some Athabascan and Yokuts groups.
  • The ‘Antap Society was organized at the provincial level with representatives from major Chumash villages meeting at five-year intervals, creating a structured regional political organization.
• The semi-subterranean, earth-covered dance house — the signature structure of the Kuksu Cult — functioned as the physical locus of secret society power, with its distribution coinciding exactly with that of the cult, and with remote bush dance locations used for initiations at distances of 200-300 meters from villages.
  • Kroeber noted that ’the spread of the earth house as a ritualistic chamber coincides with that of the kuksu cult’ — making the structure a reliable archaeological marker.
  • Coastal Pomo children were initiated at ‘bush dance houses’ in the hills about 200-300 meters outside villages, featuring ceremonial structures, dance areas, and camping zones for observers.
  • The Maidu had three distinct ritual structures: a large dance house, a smaller earth lodge for spirit mediums, and a small semi-subterranean men’s house about 150 yards away serving as secret society headquarters.

The American Southwest and Mesoamerica

Pueblo secret societies — particularly in the Eastern Pueblos — constituted the actual governing structure of communities, controlling land, resources, ritual, and political authority through hierarchically ranked sodalities that were far from egalitarian despite surface appearances, with origins traceable to at least the eighth century CE.

• Eastern Pueblo communities were governed not by kinship groups or elected leaders but by hierarchically ranked secret sodalities that controlled land, resources, rituals, and politics — constituting ’the most complex, centralized, top-down political structure in Western North America north of Mexico.’
  • Ware (2014) noted that the Eastern Pueblos had a uniquely centralized structure based on economic, political, and ritual control by secret society sodalities, approaching social stratification.
  • In the Eastern Pueblos, ritualists ultimately controlled land use, with access to land obtained by acquiring ritual roles whose high costs ensured only wealthy families could participate.
• The apparent egalitarianism of Pueblo societies was a surface illusion — clans were ranked, only 30 percent of clans owned land or ceremonial property, and political leaders used supernatural sanctions, fines, imprisonment, whipping, and expulsion to maintain their grip on power.
  • Brandt (1977) stressed the oppressive and unresponsive nature of Taos political leaders (the Lulina, or ‘Old People’) toward those without full access to the religious and political system.
  • Whiteley (1986) argued convincingly that the Southwest was far from egalitarian: clans and lineages were ranked, and some ethnographers suspected that surface egalitarianism was performed to hide power structures from European authorities.
• The Western Pueblos differed structurally from the Eastern Pueblos in that corporate kinship groups (clans) rather than cross-cutting sodalities controlled land, kivas, and ritual paraphernalia — producing a more heterarchical, less centralized political organization reflected in their multiple small kivas.
  • In the Western Pueblos, fifteen to thirty clans per village owned land, houses, and the ceremonies used in sodality secret societies — providing head priests while rank-and-file membership could come from any descent group.
  • The multiple small kivas of the Western Pueblos contrast with the Eastern Pueblo pattern, reflecting the difference between clan-based and sodality-based political organization.
• Secret society sodalities in the Southwest had early origins — with the necessary organizational conditions existing by the eighth century CE and burial goods paralleling ethnographic secret society paraphernalia by at least the tenth century — challenging interpretations of these as late innovations.
  • Ware (2014) interpreted the archaeological evidence as indicating secret societies existed at least from the eighth century CE, while ritual paraphernalia of the Historic ‘Antap Society in southern California existed by 1000 BCE.
  • The Katsina Cult, generally viewed as originating around 1300 CE, may represent a later development on much older secret society foundations, with Katsina spirits associated with the dead serving as intermediaries between men and gods.

Plains Secret Societies

Plains secret societies ranged from shamanistic organizations with jealously guarded supernatural powers to warrior societies, but in all cases operated as vehicles for personal aggrandizement through extortion, wealth extraction, and political control, with ambitious men constantly founding new societies to compete with established ones.

• Plains shamanic secret societies were explicitly described by ethnographers as vehicles for personal enrichment and aggrandizement rather than community service, with doctoring society members routinely described as ‘rapacious extortioners’ who sometimes deliberately caused illness to collect curing fees.
  • Fortune described Omaha Water Monster Society members as taught how to gain wealth and take whatever they wanted, with some even willing to see family members die to acquire power.
  • “Fortune documented that society doctors were willing to kill rivals to protect their financial interests, and described their arrogance in private as appalling despite demure public personas.” —Fortune
• A key dynamic driving the proliferation of Plains secret societies was that ambitious men unable to gain admittance to established organizations founded their own rival societies, explaining why most Plains communities had multiple competing secret societies simultaneously.
  • Murie observed that ’there were at all times ambitious men unable to attain membership in the regular organizations’ who began their own societies and became imitators and sometimes rivals of established groups.
  • The Hot Dance, including fire walking and placing hands in boiling water, was purchased by the Crow from a neighboring group for 600 horses, illustrating the fluid buying and selling of entire ritual complexes.
• Membership fees for Plains secret societies were extraordinarily costly, often requiring candidates to borrow heavily and involve the sexual services or outright transfer of their wives to sellers of positions, with initiation costs for some Hidatsa societies requiring up to 100 buffalo robes plus 100 pairs of moccasins and weeks of feasting.
  • In the prestigious Hidatsa Earthnaming Society, bundle transfers required giving a hundred buffalo robes, a hundred pairs of moccasins, feasting foods for all members for four days, plus pemmican and payments to special role-players, taking a year to prepare.
  • The practice of candidates’ wives providing sexual services to sellers of society positions or to the twelve ‘Red Stick’ holy men was documented among the Hidatsa, Mandan, Blackfoot, and Arikara.
• The power members had was not exercised for any social function but for their personal aggrandizement. They collected sheer ‘graft’ freely, not only profiting by illnesses and the popular conviction that doctors could turn illness into death at will, but also collecting in advance on occasion.
• Plains secret societies held public displays of supernatural power including fire walking, placing hands in boiling water, apparent killings and revivals, and instantaneous plant growth, primarily to impress potential clients and recruit wealthy members rather than for genuine community spiritual benefit.
  • Will observed that ’the principal object was to impress upon spectators the great powers of the performers’ and that they vied with each other to put on ever more miraculous performances.
  • European observers witnessing Arikara medicine lodge performances including decapitations with continuing dancing and miraculous restorations were unable to determine how the tricks were accomplished.
• Plains secret societies were organized into regional networks that cross-cut kinship and ethnic boundaries, with some federations drawing members from thirteen villages and others crossing tribal lines, creating large-scale interaction spheres with shared ritual art styles centered on buffalo and bear iconography.
  • The Pawnee federation of thirteen villages gathered inside an earthen ring about 20 meters in diameter, with the Society of Chiefs drawing members from all villages representing a clear regional organization.
  • The mythical horned water monster featured as a power animal across multiple Plains groups, while buffalo skulls, bear imagery, and dog meat maintained high ceremonial value throughout the interaction sphere.
• Enforcement in Plains secret societies ranged from supernatural threats and social ostracism to outright killing, with high-ranking members widely feared for their reputed ability to cause death through spells, and non-members who attempted to practice curing being killed to protect society members’ financial interests.
  • Omaha doctoring society members used their reputed power to settle grudges, and non-members claiming to have healing powers were killed by sorcery to protect the financial interests of society members.
  • Members of the Blood Horn Society professed to have power to cause death at will, making them greatly feared, while the Blackfoot Horn Society was so dangerous that it was considered risky to even talk about its members.

The Eastern Woodlands and Others

The Ojibway Midewiwin Society exemplifies the secret society form in the Eastern Woodlands: a hierarchically graded organization whose explicitly stated purpose was to give ambitious men and women influence through acknowledged supernatural powers at the expense of credulous non-members, with prohibitively expensive initiations ensuring only the wealthiest reached the highest degrees.

• The Midewiwin Society’s purpose was explicitly documented as giving ‘a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous,’ making it one of the most candidly self-interested secret societies on record.
  • Midewiwin members were also concerned to curry influence and acquire friends to defend themselves against their numerous enemies, mainly uninitiated community members, indicating that aggrandizers calculated risks of exercising power against dangers of popular resentment.
  • Initiates were taught they needed great strength to resist doing evil including harming kinsmen, implying many initiates did not resist these temptations and were classic aggrandizers or even sociopaths.
• Midewiwin initiation fees were stratified so that entry to the first grade was prohibitive for many, second grade cost twice as much, and fourth grade cost four times the first, with candidates frequently borrowing to pay fees and becoming impoverished, while mide members received large payments for killing enemies and curing sickness.
  • Gifts and fees took the form of robes, blankets, kettles, furs, tobacco, and horses, with Mitawit Society initiation fees ranging between $200 and $300 in the late nineteenth century.
  • Love potion recipes fetched especially high prices, and since initiates of all grades were the only people supposedly capable of expelling illness-causing spirits, they were paid for curing services as well.
• Midewiwin ceremonial structures, though visible to crowds of spectators through openings, contained performances of supernatural power including objects moving by themselves, snakes appearing from empty bags, fire mastery, and the signature ‘shooting’ of initiates with shells who fell dead and were revived, a dramatic element that also diffused to the Bella Coola secret societies of the Northwest Coast.
  • The identical drama of shooting initiates with quartz crystals causing feigned death and resurrection was used in Bella Coola secret societies, illustrating the ease with which effective ritual elements could diffuse across large distances.
  • Members in the two highest degrees built small, tall, walled structures for communicating with spirits, depicted in pictographs with spiritual connections emanating from their tops, similar to tent representations in Upper Paleolithic caves in France.
• Arctic and Aleutian whaling crews, organized around wealthy umialiks who controlled ritual preparations and competitive feasting in special karigi structures made of whale bone, may represent a form of secret society emerging around 1000 CE as complex transegalitarian hunter-gatherer societies developed around productive whaling locations.
  • The karigi contained ritual paraphernalia including masks and thick oil-impregnated soils from feasting activities, and the umialik sponsored both secret whaling rituals and public competitive feasting against rival umialiks.
  • Lantis documented whale hunter cult groups with special privileges and dangerous powers, including the use of human remains as ‘poisons,’ suggesting these formed voluntary, hierarchically organized secret-society-like organizations.

Part II: The Old World

Oceania

From Melanesian Suque societies to Polynesian Areoi cults, Oceanic secret societies consistently operated as vehicles for acquiring earthly wealth and power through control of supernatural claims, ancestor connections, and costly initiation hierarchies, with high-ranking members using terror, debt manipulation, and monopolies on tusked pigs to extract resources from communities.

• Australian Aboriginal ritual organizations occupy a gray zone between tribal initiations and secret societies, with groups like the Djanggawul Cult in Arnhem Land showing features of secret societies including payment for initiation, staged revelation of mysteries over years, restricted rights to dances and paraphernalia, and leaders from the most powerful clans, though whether membership was truly voluntary remains debated.
  • Berndt noted that Djanggawul candidates were ‘already fully initiated into manhood’ and that years might pass before the complete series was revealed, with active participation only achieved in middle age.
  • Peterson argued that virtually all men were initiated into the Djanggawul cult and that increasing knowledge was simply age-grading, so the cult may not qualify as a true secret society despite its hierarchical features.
• Polynesian Areoi societies featured ranked memberships only accessible to chiefs and the wealthy, members claiming to represent gods or the dead and living above normal morality, with the requirement that members kill their own children to join mirroring demands for extreme sacrificial commitment found in West African secret societies.
  • Areoi members could subsist by manipulating beliefs and terror ’to impose the most shameful extortions,’ resulting in an ’easy livelihood,’ with six lodges on Tahiti and six on nearby islands forming a regional structure.
  • The Whare Kura Society in New Zealand required five years of seclusion for training in esoteric knowledge and excluded women entirely, with members performing public exhibitions of their strange powers.
• In New Hebrides Melanesia, high-ranking Suque men used their monopoly on tusked pigs — which required years of specialized breeding and multiple wives to feed — as the basis of a credit system that ensnared communities in debt, with interest rates up to 100 percent, enabling creditors to ‘ruthlessly squeeze debtors dry’ and manipulate, rob, or murder opponents with impunity.
  • Speiser observed that high-ranking Suque men could use manipulation, intimidation, terror, robbery, and even murder with impunity because opponents feared their magical powers, so rivals were often liquidated.
  • The debt system created ‘a net which is impossible to disentangle and which is cast over the whole population without hope of escape,’ yet the Suque candidate who destroyed all material assets quickly recouped losses through the advantages of higher rank.
• It is belief in the potent mana of men of high rank which gives them their esteem and they exploit this belief in every possible way in order to indulge in whatever may be to their advantage and profit.
• New Hebridean secret society ideology centered on ancestor spirits embodied in masks, statues, and bones of high-ranking deceased members, whose mana increased with rank and persisted after death, creating a system where sacrificing pigs was theologically necessary for the afterlife and practically necessary to advance in the Suque hierarchy.
  • Each rank had its own spirit effigy inhabited by dead members of that rank, while statues possessed the special powers of each grade and some were so powerful they could kill uninitiated people or those of lower rank.
  • If no pigs were sacrificed for the dead, the afterlife was miserable and demons could destroy their souls, creating ideological premises that clearly advantaged individuals wanting to create an economic base for power.
• New Hebridean and Melanesian secret society clubhouses, dancing grounds, and associated stone monuments — including avenues of menhirs each representing a pig sacrifice, dolmen-like sacrificial tables, and walled cemeteries with monoliths — constitute an archaeological signature of secret society activity with direct parallels to prehistoric Neolithic monuments.
  • Ethnographers explicitly compared the long rows of menhirs at dancing grounds on Vao Island, with one avenue containing 372 stones, to the Neolithic stone arrangements at Carnac in France.
  • High-ranking Suque members received special burial treatment including interment in walled, restricted areas behind clubhouses, skulls modeled with plastic compound incorporating boar tusks, burial under monoliths in secret locations, and secondary treatment in stone slab boxes.
• Speiser noted a strong relationship in the New Hebrides between artistic development and secret society organization — with art essentially absent in areas lacking secret societies — and the pervasive ‘Suque art style’ applied to almost every decorated utensil featured stylized ancestors, pig mandibles, tusks, birds, and sharks representing mana, suggesting that widespread prehistoric art interaction spheres may similarly reflect regional secret society networks.
  • Posts in Suque clubhouses were carved with animals associated with different ranks: lizards for lowest ranks, fish and sharks for mid-ranks, and birds (especially hawks) for highest ranks, creating a readable visual hierarchy.
  • The suggestion that regional art styles in the Natufian, Prepottery Neolithic, Puebloan, Hopewellian, Upper Paleolithic, or Chavín interaction spheres may reflect similar secret society regional organizations is one of the book’s key archaeological implications.
• In New Guinea, Dani Ganekhe stone cult groups and Sun Cult organizations share all defining features of secret societies: voluntary membership, costly initiation, hierarchical internal ranking, claims to control weather, fertility, and health through powerful ancestral stones, and regional confederacies linking big men across moieties and lineages over areas exceeding 60 by 20 kilometers.
  • Hampton documented that big men in Dani secret sacred compounds stored sacred bundles including Ganekhe stones, human mandibles, fossils, and quartz crystals in isolated compounds, some forty-five minutes’ walk from villages, with full-time custodians.
  • All caves in Dani culture were sacred places of emergence where entry was prohibited to the uninitiated, serving as meeting places for discussing supernatural secrets, storing ritual paraphernalia including mummies, with big men often having private ritual caves.

Chiefdoms in Central Africa

Central African secret societies in the Azande area and Rwanda, though often interpreted as resistance movements against colonial powers or chiefs, share fundamental characteristics with secret societies worldwide including costly initiations, exclusive supernatural knowledge as a basis for wealth extraction, and strong connections to political authority.

• While Central African secret societies like the Azande Mani Society have been interpreted as resistance movements against colonial rule, their core features — restricted supernatural medicine knowledge sold for material gain, voluntary membership crossing social boundaries, and constant introduction of new ritual complexes — match secret societies in non-colonial transegalitarian contexts worldwide.
  • Evans-Pritchard noted that the motive for introducing new medicines was explicitly material gain: ‘a man who brings a new Mani medicine from a foreign country is likely to make a little wealth while its novelty persists.’
  • As in Melanesia, the Plains, and the Northwest Coast, any individual with knowledge could start a lodge, and often a society lost popularity as members joined newer, more novel associations, leaving old ones ‘only a memory.’
• The Kubwanda and Ryangombe societies of Rwanda had explicit political functions — with the head appointed by the king, members including royal assistants and bodyguards, and Czekanowski raising the possibility that the interlacustrine states might not exist without secret societies — demonstrating that secret societies could be foundational rather than peripheral to state formation.
  • Czekanowski expressed the opinion that rule by minorities very probably depended on secret societies, and that ’the hierarchy of secret societies creates dependencies that bridge territorial chieftainships and clans.’
  • Higher initiates in the Ryangombe Cult had their tongues pierced until enough arm rings were given, then danced ’like maniacs’ in ecstatic possession states, told ‘you are another person… you shine like a leopard.’

West Africa

West African secret societies, especially the Poro and Egbo/Ekkpo of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, represent the most fully documented case of secret societies as explicit instruments of elite domination, using terror, extortion, monopoly control of trade and resources, and cannibalistic enforcement to control community life, while using inclusive ideological claims of community benefit as cover.

• Early ethnographers of West African secret societies explicitly identified their purpose as using spirit powers for selfish ends, with Harley documenting that Poro’s inner circle ‘worked in secret and ruled by frightfulness,’ and that control of tribal affairs rested in the hands of a few privileged old men of high degree.
  • There was considerable rivalry for power between mask-owning clan leaders resulting in endemic petty warfare, attempts to poison rival zo officials, and especially targeting of upstarts.
  • Uchendu observed that secret societies were like mutual insurance societies enabling socially ambitious individuals to invest savings in youth while guaranteeing economic support and prestige in old age.
• West African secret societies extracted wealth through an extraordinary array of mechanisms including tolls on roads, trade monopolies on palm oil, fees for settling disputes, fines for capricious ritual infractions, payments for masked performances at births/deaths/installations, food requisitions during initiation periods described as ’extortion,’ and debts collected on behalf of members.
  • During the lengthy Poro initiation seclusion of three to four years, up to twenty-two different masked spirits visited supporting towns to beg, borrow, steal, or extort food, constituting ‘a serious drain on the public wealth.’
  • The Egbo made trade almost impossible for non-members and ensured that debts to members were paid, while the Ekkpo claimed a monopoly on palm oil nut processing which was the main source of wealth.
• West African secret society ideology centered on ancestor masks as channels to supernatural power, with the claim that mask-wearers channeled ancestral spirits making them ‘immune from all laws,’ while the highest ranks required sacrificing and eating one’s own son, and acquiring any mask required human sacrifice, structuring access to power around extreme demonstrations of commitment.
  • Portrait masks of the living and dead were said to harbor spirits that could be contacted by wearing the masks or using them as oracles, with spirits of dead zo literally becoming masks.
  • In secret society ideology, eating the meat of powerful animals or humans transferred the eater’s soul force by absorbing the consumed being’s spirit, with the highest and most effective sacrifice being one’s own son.
• The final secret of the Poro was frightfulness. The men’s whole concern was to keep the women and children terrified and to use the higher knowledge of the inner circle of priests for selfish ends.
• Cannibalism is abundantly attested in West African secret society rituals, serving simultaneously as enforcement terror, ecstatic experience for initiates, ideological demonstration of power above normal morality, and practical means of eliminating rivals, with the first meal of Poro candidates reportedly being a cannibalistic feast.
  • The Human Leopard, Human Crocodile, Human Baboon, and Python Societies of Liberia featured cannibalistic rites often used to remove rivals, while members claimed ability to transform into those animals to carry out killings.
  • Members of predatory warrior secret societies gave human sacrifices to obtain wealth and power, while Nimbe’ei Society members on Malekula reportedly killed and ate those who injured any society member.
• The Poro Society’s regional structure cross-cut tribal, ethnic, and language boundaries, with central regional control, members able to participate in rituals anywhere, and Poro political influence so pervasive that no one could hold any position of authority without being a Poro member, making the Poro effectively the real government operating behind nominal secular chiefs.
  • Little documented that ’no one could hope to occupy any position of authority in the chiefdom without being a Poro member and receiving Poro support,’ with Poro leaders controlling affairs, regulating society and economy, and holding final say in judicial matters.
  • The highest Poro ranks were restricted to members of two or three of the most powerful kinship groups in Liberia, ensuring hereditary control of the organization while maintaining the fiction of open membership.
• Bellman’s contemporary study of the Poro challenged earlier terror-based accounts by arguing that the real secret of secret societies is not liturgical content but the knowledge of how to create and maintain public fictions, control information, and wield power through the management of secrecy itself — though this revisionist view may simply reflect concessions modern societies made to state rule.
  • Bellman argued that women often knew Poro secrets but could not reveal that they knew ’the secret’ for fear of reprisals, demonstrating that everyone maintained public fictions while privately understanding the performance.
  • Hayden contends that Bellman and Simmel were wrong and Walter and Harley were right: desire for power was probably the origin of secret societies, though modern state rule forced them to find alternatives to unrestrained terror.

Part III: Implications for Archaeology

Archaeological Applications

Secret societies leave distinctive material signatures—including special structures, ritual caves, power animal iconography, feasting remains, and interaction sphere art styles—that allow archaeologists to identify their presence across a wide range of prehistoric societies from the Upper Paleolithic through early complex societies worldwide.

• A suite of recurring material patterns can serve as archaeological indicators of secret societies, including special ritual structures near communities, remote locations with ritual deposits, distinctive paraphernalia, power animal iconography, feasting remains, and interaction sphere art styles.
  • The most sacred paraphernalia was hidden from non-initiates and carefully curated or destroyed, meaning material evidence can be thin in community contexts, but remote caches—especially in caves—may preserve significant assemblages.
  • Recurring paraphernalia included masks, quartz crystals, exotic shells, spears or arrows, and noise-making instruments claimed to be spirit voices—especially drums, rattles, bullroarers, flutes, and conch shell trumpets.
  • Power animal iconography in secret society contexts typically featured carnivores, omnivores, and raptors rather than major food species, often in threatening poses—a feature that has puzzled prehistoric cave art researchers.
• The elaborately painted caves of western European Upper Paleolithic, including Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume, constitute some of the best candidates for prehistoric secret society sites, based on evidence of restricted access, children’s presence, ecstatic induction, astronomical alignments, cannibalism, and regional interaction spheres.
  • Villeneuve’s analysis found that 75 percent of cave images were small and of poor quality, with 66 percent best viewed from a squatting or crouching position, suggesting different groups used different spaces within the caves for different purposes.
  • The occurrence of dense panels of crude superimposed engravings in small alcoves—like the Abside at Lascaux containing over half the cave’s 2,000 images—may represent ‘waiting areas’ where initiates were kept while higher-ranked rituals were conducted nearby.
  • Bone flutes, bullroarers, and lithophones are ‘commonly found inside the decorated caves,’ and cannibalism is documented in at least fifteen Upper Paleolithic sites in France, with 40 percent of Upper Paleolithic human remains showing cut marks.
• Near Eastern Prepottery Neolithic sites including Göbekli Tepe, Jerf el Ahmar, and Nahal Hemar display the hallmark features of secret society centers—remote locations, small exclusive structures with benches and power animal imagery, human sacrifices, and regional scope—rather than the communitarian social-glue functions usually attributed to them.
  • At Jerf el Ahmar, a decapitated skeleton lay in an agonized pose in the center of a subterranean ritual structure, engravings of headless figures adorned the benches, and two human skulls were found at the bottom of post holes, indicating human sacrifice was routine.
  • Göbekli Tepe’s T-shaped pillars depicting aggressive power animals in completely subterranean pit structures with wall benches, located far from any known habitation and drawing materials from a 200-kilometer radius, closely parallel West African anthropomorphic stone pillars in secret society clubhouses.
  • Nahal Hemar cave, a difficult-to-access desert location yielding stone masks explicitly compared to African and Melanesian secret society masks, bullroarers, decorated human skulls, and unique textiles, was most likely a storage location for high-level secret society ritual paraphernalia.
• Given the relatively common occurrence of secret societies in ethnographically complex hunter/gatherer societies, horticultural societies, and even some chiefdom societies, it would make sense for archaeologists to stay alert to the possibility of material indications of secret societies when studying these types of prehistoric societies.
• Kivas, cave shrines, and Chacoan great houses in the American Southwest represent the clearest archaeological instances where the direct historic approach confirms secret society presence, with features including restricted access, astronomical alignments, esoteric paraphernalia caches, and evidence of regional sodality networks.
  • Ritual cave assemblages in the Southwest were ‘surprisingly consistent,’ featuring feather headdresses, ceremonial staffs, turquoise mosaics, solstice-oriented deposits, and high-value paraphernalia, with caves described as used by secret society ceremonialists for blessing crops and defending against enemies.
  • Chacoan great houses like Pueblo Bonito have been explicitly linked to prehistoric regional sodality organizations whose ability to control labor was used to construct impressive cosmologically aligned architecture meant to awe and impress people.
  • At San Lazaro Pueblo, a small store room yielded a ritual assemblage including gypsum plaster masks and many other ritual items consistent with secret society shrine use.
• Chavín de Huántar in the Peruvian highlands represents a prime example of an evolved ‘Super Secret Society Regional Polity,’ combining large public courtyards for impressive displays with over two kilometers of underground galleries used for exclusive rituals including cannibalism, hallucinogen use, and multiple conch-shell trumpet orchestration.
  • The galleries at Chavín contained rooms only large enough for small exclusive groups, with fragmented human bones mixed with butchered camelid bones at their entrances and abundant evidence of hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus use and paraphernalia for ingesting psychoactive substances.
  • More than twenty conch shell trumpets—each requiring shells imported from at least 1,200 kilometers away—have been recovered at Chavín; played in unison, they create psychologically disorienting states similar to ethnographic secret society use of multiple horn instruments to represent spirit voices.
  • “John Rick argued that Chavín was not a system-serving or communitarian ritual organization but a predatory one very similar to the regional secret societies of West Africa, with competing regional centers vying to attract powerful elites as members.” —Rick
• The specialized peripheral structures at Keatley Creek in the Canadian Interior Plateau, distinguished by unusual lithic assemblages, dog sacrifices, bullroarers, feasting evidence, and separation from the main residential area, represent the only archaeologically identified secret society lodges in western Canada.
  • Features distinguishing the Keatley Creek ritual structures included rock-lined hearths unique at the site, unusual prestige items, probable war clubs, dog bone drinking tubes, gaming pieces, a crescent biface, and bird species associated with shamanistic activities.
  • The emergence of secret societies at Keatley Creek fits the cross-cultural pattern: the site had a peak population of over a thousand residents organized into corporate kinship groups, making a cross-cutting organization necessary for any broader political agenda.
• The dominant archaeological interpretation of prehistoric ritual centers as expressions of communitarian social integration or the power of belief systems fundamentally misunderstands the underlying dynamics, which ethnographic evidence shows were driven by ambitious aggrandizers using supernatural claims as pretexts for surplus extraction and political control.
  • Hodder’s claim that social differences at Çatalhöyük ‘only concern the control of knowledge about symbolism and beliefs’ and that economics played little role is contradicted by recurring prestige items, elaborate daggers, polished obsidian mirrors, and child burials with large bead assemblages at the site.
  • Mills argued that the non-kin-related burials in ‘history houses’ at Çatalhöyük make most sense as residences of administrative heads in secret societies organized on a regional scale, paralleling the ratio of kivas to normal structures in Southwestern Pueblos.
  • The strong pattern emerging from ethnographies is that claims to esoteric knowledge and supernatural power were primarily rhetorical facades used to justify domination by those already possessing economic and social leverage.

Conclusions

Secret societies were surplus-based strategies created by aggrandizers in transegalitarian societies to concentrate power beyond kinship constraints, and their regional networks and institutional characteristics suggest they were the foundational stepping stones from which institutionalized priesthoods, early state religions, and eventually complex polities emerged.

• In virtually all ethnographically documented cases, secret societies either directly controlled political decision-making or held inordinate influence over it, with secret society priests creating secular chiefly roles as puppets to manage daily affairs while retaining real power themselves.
  • On the American Plains, secret society priests explicitly created the roles of secular chiefs for their own purposes; in West Africa, Harley viewed chiefs as essentially puppets of secret society leaders.
  • In Southwestern Pueblos, Brandt documented that leaders of secret societies held the most political power and enforced their will on the disenfranchised majority who protested but to no effect.
  • The Poro and Suque are outstanding examples of secret societies that controlled political figures and decisions, while Walter argued that secret societies constituted an oligarchy that ‘worked as specialists in terror.’
• Terror was the primary enforcement mechanism of most power-oriented secret societies, used systematically against women, children, skeptics, and non-initiates through masked rampages, threats of cannibalism, killing of transgressors, and the strategic targeting of recalcitrant individuals who might expose the fraudulent basis of supernatural claims.
  • Walter argued that secret society power was based on terror used by elites to rule, comparing the donning of a spirit mask to wearing a riot police face shield—the individual was no longer responsible for their actions since these were manifestations of spirits.
  • Those who wore masks were not held responsible for their actions since these were manifestations of the spirits, and the spirits of the masks dictated the appropriate behavior—a pretext for anti-social behavior that secret society members considered themselves above normal morality to use.
  • The recalcitrant 10–25 percent of communities who were staunch skeptics posed real threats to secret society power and were the primary targets for killing when they trespassed on sacred areas or mocked society claims.
• The ideological claims of secret societies—that only they could protect communities from dangerous supernatural forces, that their ritual knowledge was essential for communal well-being, and that they acted for the common good—were self-serving pretexts that served to justify extracting surplus wealth and labor from communities under threat of supernatural retribution.
  • Supernatural power was portrayed as dangerous and capricious, with only secret societies able to save communities from threats such as cannibal spirits, floods, or fires—a convenient means of preventing scrutiny of sham displays while creating implicit obligations of material support.
  • The seemingly kindly public persona of secret society leaders was a strategic manipulation: officials described as ‘kindly patriarchs who were also traditional terrorists’ maintained a retiring, gracious public face while exhibiting shocking arrogance in private.
  • Secret society demands were described as a form of extortion—a serious drain on the public’s wealth—with surpluses obtained through initiation fees, high-interest loans to candidates, selling of cult knowledge, and general levies for rituals ostensibly for community benefit.
• Secret societies may constitute the missing link in understanding why religion played such a prominent role in the development of more complex polities, including early states.
• Secret societies shared so many structural features with early state priesthoods—cross-cutting kinship groups, hierarchical graded membership, formal training replacing innate ability, claims of supernatural connections critical for community survival, requirement for exotic paraphernalia, and use of terror—that they likely represent the institutional precursors from which state religions and priesthoods evolved.
  • Early Maya, Sumerian, Chinese, and Egyptian state priesthoods continued a close relationship between elite religious and political rule, featuring the same exclusive wealthy membership, formal training-based authority, costly paraphernalia, frightening supernatural beings, and human sacrifices characteristic of secret societies.
  • Webster suggested that trained priesthoods could develop from successful secret societies operating in conjunction with chiefly control, as exemplified by the Whare Kura in New Zealand and the Ogboni of the Yoruba where the political head was also the chief of the priests.
  • Walter argued that when chiefs entered power struggles with secret societies, the result was co-option and transformation rather than destruction—as in Sierra Leone and southwest Nigeria where secret society masked spirit impersonators became the king’s police force and eliminated rivals.
• Major prehistoric monumental ritual centers including Göbekli Tepe, Chavín de Huántar, Chacoan great houses, Stonehenge, Olmec centers, and Minoan peak sanctuaries are best understood not as popular pilgrimage destinations or expressions of communal belief, but as ‘Super Secret Society Regional Polities’ that evolved from simpler secret society organizations and laid the foundations for state-level political and religious institutions.
  • Such centers were characterized by the same features as regional secret society networks—voluntary but exclusive wealthy membership, hereditary cross-cutting roles, hierarchical graded access, claims to supernatural knowledge critical for community survival, costly exotic paraphernalia, human sacrifice, and use of terror—scaled up by greater surplus control.
  • The pilgrimage model commonly invoked to explain these centers fails to explain why they were created, who organized them, what practical benefits organizers received, or why they involved such extreme exclusivity and terror; secret society models provide causal mechanisms that pilgrimage models lack.
  • The development pathway from secret society to state religion may explain why the heads of early states so often resorted to lavish impressive ritual displays and terror to rule—these were the main tactics used by most successful secret societies, now scaled to state resources.
• The communitarian model that explains prehistoric ritual elaboration as social integration for stress relief fundamentally misreads the ethnographic record, which consistently shows secret societies increasing inequality and social divisiveness rather than cohesion, with organizers primarily motivated by personal aggrandizement rather than community benefit.
  • Drucker explicitly stated that the function of secret societies was to dominate society, with the ultimate effect being ‘schismatic and disintegrative rather than integrative,’ while Tefft argued that secrecy further aggravated social antagonisms rather than reducing them.
  • Boas maintained that the source of ritual must be found in the advantages and prerogatives that secret society membership gives, while Adams concluded that Gitksan chiefs used expensive secret dance societies to exclude non-elites and form an oligarchy protecting each other’s interests.
  • The claim that ritual knowledge itself was the source of power leaves unexplained how such beliefs became accepted in communities and why they were not simply dismissed by skeptics—the real basis of power was economic leverage, debt, kinship pressure, and coercion, not belief.
• Secret societies first appeared among complex hunter-gatherers in resource-rich environments capable of producing reliable surpluses, were absent in simple foraging bands, and their archaeological record likely extends back into the Upper Paleolithic if not earlier, making them the earliest form of institutionalized religion linked to political power.
  • Goldschmidt concluded that sodalities were absent in simple foraging societies but became increasingly important in mid-range societies such as those on the American Northwest Coast, in California, and in the horticultural societies of Melanesia, Africa, and North America.
  • In California, Bean and Vane observed that religious institutionalization correlated ‘markedly with economic and ecological potentials,’ while Kroeber argued that the Kuksu Cult was a luxury only prosperous areas could afford to support.
  • With the establishment of secret society organizations came the first commandments against trespass, the first organized ritual system outside kinship groups with a corporate existence transcending individual lives, the first priest-like roles, and the first institutionalized links between religion and power.