Entheogenic Archealogy?

I found this article today, "Anasazi - Ancient Migration - The Pueblo Mystery" in the New York Times in a section I hardly ever read: the Science Section. But it probed some interesting, wild eyed ideas which I will split into two parts. I recommend reading the article if you have some freetime, but I'll try to summarize the main points.

Part I
Many peoples in the CO/AZ/NM area migrated in the 11-13th centuries for semi-unknown reasons. For instance people from northern Arizona, almost Hopi territory, moved to more remote and dry areas in the south, or similarly, people in the lush areas of southern CO (oh my god) moved down near Hopi territory.

Interestingly this was during a period after which they had been domesticated for some time. The population of wild deer was almost obsolete and they were relying on corn harvests and the domestication of turkeys. This stagnate lifestyle, according to certain archeologists, spurred a certain "ideological" movement within the peoples, which may perhaps contain some answers as to why they moved.

Some sites had evidence of pillaging and wars, suggesting that in times of drought other peoples came and fought, not settling in the new territory, but moving on. Interestingly this was only possible during times of domestication. But some sites, which displayed different modes of architecture, looked as if they had been closed up, indicative of a potential return.

This notion of ideology forming is really interesting to me. The artifacts and architecture they found were bowls, and gathering spaces that resembled amphitheatres. This was in sharp contrast to sort of small dwellings or holes, probably used in shamanic type rituals. The amphitheatres and bowls suggest gatherings of some kind, perhaps of a religious nature.

This brings a very worthwhile element to the study of indigenous/shamanic cultures to me. Around this time too, on the east coast of the continental United States, aboriginal peoples began to experience a revolution of consciousness. This was epitomized in Dekanawidah's emergence in the Haudenosaunee (Iroqois) as a prophet promoting peace among the five great nations. Dekanawidah brought to them the Great Law of Peace, which served as the Haudenosaunee's (Haude-no-shawnee) constitution as well as inspiration for Ben Franklin and I believe also James Madison in the drafting of our constitution. The article goes on to say that the sites which did not look ravaged is perhaps indicative of the desire to spread their newly found consciousness with potential plans of returning.

Their understandings of life and themselves, I would argue were not that different from ours or other humans (Europeans) at that time and perhaps served as a prelude to this existence we live in now.

The most interesting, and perhaps daunting aspect of the article was the conclusion that, when the societies became more complex they simultaneously became more fragile.

Part II
The picture above is from southern CO and looks strangely like a place a few of us have been. There was a time down in the southwest when I had opened myself up very slowly and gently to the inner rubbing's of the cosmos. It was like eating an entire plate of fresh vegetables with a tall glass of cold fresh spring water....on a spiritual scale.

As I was walking around there was an unmistakable notion that I had returned to a place I had been before and a sense of nostalgia. I remember looking around across this mesa at majestic mountains in the distance, looking up at the stars and feeling a flux of information, not in the form of natural language, surrounding me. I carried with me a guitar over my shoulder, and with little knowledge of keys or chords or scales, didn't stop making sound for however long that duration of time lasted.

The idea of nostalgia, and that I had been there before really stuck, and the image finds its place in my head regularly throughout my weeks. I began to wonder, if events transpired in certain places, what traces of information still linger aside from physical artifacts? What memories linger if there is one universal consciousness? And is this something archeology/psychopharmacologist/ethnobotanists have really looked into?

On a similar night in New York a couple years ago, I entered some woods around my school and felt what seemed to be a whirlwind of emotions, screaming in torture. The trees were spinning in a vortex and were not angry at me, but were just angry. It was scary and I had to leave.

But a few weeks ago a friend and I were talking about ancient forests while we were driving around upstate New York, and how so many of the trees out here had been planted in the past few hundred years, while most of the others who had been there for centuries, had been cut down for lumber during the early years of our civilization. Then I again entered the woods and thought, I wonder if what I had experienced before, was again some type of indication of a historical event, that trauma lingered in the youthful forest of what was.

I suppose that my only conclusion for now relates to what the article noted as its conclusion, that as societies became more complex, they became more fragile. Complexity was a result of domestication, which in a way wasn't more complex. Rather it denied the subtle complexity that accompanied living nomadically. I guess it sought control, order, schedule in order to cultivate some of the powers of the mind, 46 chromosomes instead of 44.

As I type music is playing in my mind. It's the part of Somesing where STS9 tones it down and gives it to the piano player, after which the song rises up and the woman's beautiful voice carries us back into our original melody, but with a different force, and a different vigor.

I don't know where that music just came from.