The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

11. Autonomous World Renewal Cult Systems

Name /uap04/22015_u11 04/28/04 01:51PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 241 # 1 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 241 Chapter 11 A U T O N O M O U S W O R L D R E N E W A L C U L T S Y S T E M S The Autonomous Cult Model elucidates the cultic dimension of the Dual Clan-Cult Model with particular reference to the social structure of the postulated world renewal cults of the Central Ohio Valley earthwork traditions: the Mt. Horeb (Adena) Tradition and the two cotraditions of the Ohio Hopewell, the Fort Miami Tradition and the Chillicothe Tradition. To accommodate this wide scope, the model will be presented in two variants, one addressing each major tradition. The primary structural base of these cults, of course, was gender-specific age-grades. Whereas the age-grade span of the Nyakyusa is about is about 30 to 35 years, with the youngest members of the junior agegrade being about 10, a more conservative initial age for the Mt. Horeb and Ohio Hopewell Traditions might be 15. This would also reduce the spread between the oldest and the youngest of an age-grade to between 25 and 30 years. An age-grade will be internally divided into age-sets or age cohorts. The term “cohort” is preferred here since it has the sense that the individuals making it up would be lifelong companions. Again, using the Nyakyusa as a guideline, an age-cohort would have a spread of 5 to 8 years between the youngest and oldest companion. Therefore, four or five age cohorts would make up a single age-grade. Two active age-grades would be typical in a given region, one occupying the status of senior age-grade and the other, the junior age- Name /uap04/22015_u11 04/28/04 01:51PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 242 # 2 242 a n i m m a n e n t e c o l o g y ⫺1 0 ⫹1 grade. The senior and junior age-grades together would incorporate an age spread from about 15, for the youngest participants of the junior age-grade, to about 65–75, for the oldest participants of senior agegrade . This means that the active cultic life of a given age-grade would be sectored into two periods, first a period of about 25 to 30 years in the junior age-grade status, and then another 25 to 30 years in the senior age-grade status, thereby making up a complete, two-generational cycle of 50 to 60 years. As age-grade cult sodalities, the different ways the senior and junior cults would relate to each other would characterize the agegrade cult system of a region. On the one hand, the two could constitute autonomous senior and junior age-grade cults. This means they would relate to each other in an arm’s-length manner, each responsible for different but complementary world renewal locales and, of course, different but complementary suites of world renewal rites. On the other hand, rather than arm’s-length junior and senior age-grade cults, there is another, although less likely possibility. A senior age-grade cult and a junior age-grade cult could join together into a complex cult. A complex cult would be internally structured into two complementary sectors , one composed of a senior age-grade, the other, a junior age-grade. Of these two types, the system of separate, arm’s-length senior and junior age-grade cults would be more likely than the system of complex , integrated cults. This is because the combining of senior and junior age-grades into the same complex cult would tend to subvert the egalitarianism of same-generation companionship by the nonegalitarianism of ranked generations. However, this does not make the emergence of a complex integrated cult impossible—if a prerequisite condition existed, this being a system of simple, arm’s-length cults. That is, if the latter type of cult system was already in place, rather than inventing a totally new organization, it would be “simply” a matter of integrating established, generationally distinct and autonomous companionship groups while buffering the subverting effects of seniority by maintaining separate senior and junior sectors. Each complex cult Name /uap04/22015_u11 04/28/04 01:51PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 243 # 3 a u t o n o m o u s w...