"an important feature in much of the [Indigenous] Americas is the relationship between esoteric and bureaucratic knowledge"
for instance, "those who desgined the great construction projects of Poverty Point or Hopewell [see separate notes] were clearly drawing on esoteric knowledge of some sort--astronomical, mythic, numerological--which was continguous with the practical knowledge of maths, engineering, and construction, not to mention techniques of organizing and monitoring human labour (even voluntary labour) which were required to realize those designs"
"Over the long term of pre-Columbian history, this particular sort of knowledge always seems to lie at the core of systems of domination that periodically emerged"
For instance, Cahokia "appears to represent a self-conscious effort to turn that style of administrative esoterica into a basis for sovereignty; the gradual transformation of geometric earthworks, designed on cosmic principles, into actual fortifications being only the most obvious indication. In the end it didn't work"