October 11, 2025 Dr. Brian Hayden, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University.: “The Sky Was the Limit: The Role of Secret Societies in Creating Complex Cultures in the New World.”
One of the perduring mysteries in archaeology is the question of why the first non-domestic and monumental architecture took the form of ritual constructions, often requiring unbelievable amounts of labor and materials and often associated with complex astronomical systems. This is a cultural developmental pattern repeatedly observed on five continents, including the Americas. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Hayden has been piecing together parts of this puzzle, coming to the realization that secret societies in traditional cultures are probably the key to understanding this development. Traditional secret societies range in complexity from simple to complex, ultimately probably developing into what Dr. Hayden calls Centripetal Ritual Centers. These have different characteristics and dynamics from chiefdoms or states but are on the same classificatory level as chiefdoms and states–they are just different. Mesoamerica and South America have many particularly good candidates for Centripetal Ritual Centers such as Chavín de Huántar and La Venta. The emphasis on astronomy is just one of their key characteristics as well as of traditional secret societies.
Brian Hayden is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. His research interest focuses on understanding what artifacts from the past can tell us about the societies and cultures that left them in the archaeological record. To answer these questions, Hayden relied predominantly on ethnoarchaeology. He went to Australia to study what Aboriginals of the Western Desert used stone tools for–and how they made them. Another major study was on the traditional material culture in the Maya Highlands and its relation to the social and economic roles of households. In the past two decades, he studied the role of feasting in traditional Southeast Asian societies and how feasting can be inferred from archaeological remains. He has also contributed significantly to the theories of domestication and the prehistory of religion.