Chaco & Hohokam edited by Patricia L. Crown and W. James Judge

“Susan McIntosh (1984) has suggested, on the basis of ethnohistoric information, that among the Mande and other African peoples, the blacksmiths as a group were the only members of many societies to possess crucial sets of information. Of special interest to McIntosh was the detailed knowledge of iron technology, which, it seems, was tightly controlled for some period of time by a few blacksmiths and their associates. The power this would give those individuals is obvious, and we find that in many villages, the shamans were also blacksmiths. In order to prevent the dissemination of this privileged knowledge, the belief was introduced into the culture that working with iron was somehow ritually impure and could damn those practitioners who were not of the appropriate blacksmith class. This combination of a crucial technology, a set of beliefs to restrict its dissemination, and the elevation of a group of individuals to exalted posts is particularly suggestive as a potential element in the origin of complex societies.”

-Charles L. Redman, 1991