Pseudoarchaeology, Esotericism, and Citizenship

Over the last month or so, I’ve been working to expand my understanding of what I’m coming to call the “pseudoarchaeological discourse.” I’m tentatively using this term to describe the larger conversation in American society that supports the pseudoarchaeological imagination as well as literal pseudoarchaeological practice. As I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog, the goal of this is loosely to show the potential of a more expansive view of pseudoarchaeology to address pressing contemporary problems and to discourage (or at very least mitigate) the scorched earth “war of pseudoarchaeology” currently undertaken by more fanatical members of the archaeological discipline. 

Over the last week, I’ve been reading two works. The first is Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory, and Hugh R. Page Jr. wonderful edited volume: Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: There is a Mystery… (2015). The other is Spencer Dew’s The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali which appears in the University of Chicago Press excellent Class 200 series in religion in 2019. Most of the contributions to the former volume foreground religion in discussions of the Black esoteric and mystical experiences. The Dew monograph, in contrast, stressed the legal aspects of the “Aliite” religions that developed from the teaching of Noble Drew Ali and his Moorish Science Temple of America in the early 20th century. Many Aliite groups remain active today under such confusing names as United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors (or the Yamassee Native American Moors of the Creek Nation) or Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah (or simply Washitaw Nation).

It is probably worth stressing here that I’m in no way advocating for these groups or somehow condoning their behavior or attitudes. My goal here is to simply note the Black currents in the broader pseudoarchaeological discourse and demonstrate that these currents demonstrate the potential of pseudoarchaeological thought to contribute solutions to pressing metaphysical and social problems facing these communities as well as support the capacity for the continued work to produce contemporary pseudoarchaeological media and research. 

For now, I’d like to confine my observations to three points:

1. Esotericism and the Harlem Renaissance. I’m only now scratching the surface of the connection between esoteric beliefs, Black literary culture, and the efforts to excavate the origins of Black culture from the shadowy period of slavery. I was blown away by Jon Woodson’s contribution to the Finley et al. edited volume which explored “The Harlem Renaissance as Esotericism Black Oragean Modernism.” I can’t trace all the lines of his argument, but one thing that I took away from his article (and I’ve ordered his book To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance (1999)) is that the work of Jean Toomer was clearly influenced by the esoteric thought of G. I. Gurdjieff and his discipline A.R. Orage. In fact, Toomer’s long poem “Blue Meridian” (1936) represents an extended poetic retelling of Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. Toomer was, of course, an influential and controversial figure in early 20th century Black letters and the Harlem Renaissance. Woodson argues that scholars have sometimes overlooked Toomer’s stature and influence in Black literary circles. In particular, he suggests the Zora Neale Hurston used Toomer as a model for Moses in her novel: Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) which represents a kind of pseudoarchaeological novel and anticipates some of the pseudoarchaeological themes in the work of Ishmael Reed, for example. Hurston’s work as an ethnographer is perhaps better known to archaeologists who owe a debt of gratitude to her tireless effort to document Black culture which helped (mostly white) archaeologists make sense of peculiar deposits in the homes of enslaved people. 

That Hurston’s and Toomer’s works were suffused with esotericism, which, in turn provides a foundation for at least one branch of pseudoarchaeological thought offers yet another perspective on just how deeply pseudoarchaeology-adjacent ideas saturated 20th century Black culture. It is hardly surprising that the great saxophone player Marion Brown (who performed with Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders in Coltrane’s final and most mystical and exploratory phase) would produce a trilogy of albums influenced by Jean Toomer’s novel Cane.

2. Dew on Aliite Religion. Stephen Drew’s volume on Aliite religion offers only the barest treatment of the complex historical analysis that Aliite thinkers have developed to support the connection between contemporary Blacks and Moors. At its most pseudoarchaeological, it involves the lost content of Mu (a version of Lemuria), which through some etymological razzle-dazzle becomes the origins of the word Moor (Mu’ur). In the hands of various Aliite groups, Mu is more than just a pseudoarchaeological fascination, but represents a claim to a unique Moorish identity. This Moorish identity confers on Aliite groups a particular kind of sovereignty and citizenship required by their interpretation of E Pluribus Unum, which they claim establishes the need for a national (or at very least collective ethnic) identity (that is: the “plures” in the phrase) to share American citizenship (the unum). Of course, the conventional reading of this phrase is that the “plures” are the thirteen original colonies.

Dew stresses the belief among Aliite communities that they need to conduct their own research to establish their rights to citizenship as Moors and ultimately claims to land that ceded to them as part of the Louisiana purchase. Obviously, there is a good bit of historical and ethnic “funny business” going on to establish these claims. That said, much of the “funny business” refracts with pseudoarchaeological claims to the origins and identities of mound builders, the ethnic origins of the Poverty Point complex in Louisiana, and various other Native American sites.

Putting aside problematic of these claims, Dew makes the important point that Aliite understandings of the importance of origins and legal status of citizenship reflect the ongoing importance of these concepts in the contemporary world. The claims by Aliite groups underscore the significance of claims to legal rights to acquire the full status of humanity in a world where migrants across national boundaries often lose their rights to due process and in all too many cases basic humanity. Contemporary Aliite efforts to assert their legal rights through complicated assertions of their origins and their long-standing relationship with the United States as Moors (as opposed to any racial category) reflect the anxieties associated with citizenship, status, and basic humanity.

Pseudoarchaeology’s contribution to these claims, however problematic it may be, represents a counterhegemonic strategy designed to subvert the contemporary arguments that serve to erode the very humanity of groups by recognizing race (i.e. being Black) rather than a (pseudo) historically constituted category (and the privileges they recognize associated with such historical origins).   

3. Conspiracy and Popular Culture. One of the most intriguing aspects of these conversations is the role that popular culture plays in providing the foundations for various pseudoarchaeological and esoteric arguments. The more I read about Black pseudoarchaeology, the more I’m struck by the utter obscurity of the routes in which these ideas travel. Some of this has to do with their deliberately esoteric nature, some of this has to do with the role that orality plays in the communication and development of these ideas, and some of it has to do with the prevalence of ephemera — including books, periodicals, broadsheets, and so on — in propagating pseudoarchaeological ideas.

In other words, there is this churning undercurrent of pseudoarchaeological thought that periodically ruptures into the public eye when a prominent religious movement (e.g. Nation of Islam, various Aliite groups, and so on) or individual (e.g. Sun Ra, Louis Farrakhan) promotes it. These currents contribute to how certain groups understand works of literature, music, and film. These long-standing currents of pseudoarchaeological thought would also inform the understanding of explicit works of pseudoarchaeology broadcast on television, promulgated via YouTube channels, and published in other media which have caused archaeologists so much anxiety over the past three or four decades. 

What is particularly interesting to me is how these pseudoarchaeological undercurrents present in both historical and contemporary Black thought represent meaningful efforts to address the challenges of race, ethic identity, political authority, and existential anxiety present in the contemporary world. In other words, pseudoarchaeology, much like the discipline of archaeology, reflects genuine efforts to make the world meaningful. For this reason alone, it deserves more sincere attention that many of my colleagues are willing to afford it.