CLEMENT MEIGHAN
Clement Meighan was one of the first archaeologists to develop chronologies and assess cultural development in western Mexico and California. He also did archaeological work in Chile. He was a prime motivator in the modern day development of UCLA's Department of Anthropology. He founded the Rock Art Archive and was the first director of the archaeological survey, which today is known as the South Central Coastal Information Center.
Meighan was born on Jan. 21, 1925 in San Francisco and died April 30, 1997 in Bend, Oregon. He was married to Joan Seibert and had one daughter, Maeve. He earned his Bachelors Degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1949 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1953. In 1952, Meighan began working for UCLA and in 1962, he became a professor. Meighan was a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association , AAS and the American Geographical Society.
In the Spring of 1962 Meighan joined an expedition funded by mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, to record the then recently rediscovered rock shelter paintings in Baja California. They explored four rock shelters on foot and took photographs of five others from a helicopter. Photographs of the paintings appeared in an article by Gardner in Life Magazine and in his book The Hidden Heart of Mexico, both published that year. In 1966, Meighan published an account of the paintings along with information regarding a few artifacts found at the sites in American Antiquity.
Although having a full and varied life and an exceptional academic career, in an off-hand sort of way Meighan is infamous for being the person that first introduced Carlos Castaneda to Shamanism. As an undergraduate student at UCLA Castaneda took a class from Meighan in the Spring of 1960. A class assignment eventually led to Castaneda going on a Road Trip throughout the desert southwest in search of medicinal and spritual plants. The final result of that road trip setting the scene for the meeting between Castaneda and Don Juan Matus, the shaman/sorcerer said to have studied under a Diablero --- a sorcerer with evil powers said to have the ability to shape shift. The outcome of that meeting made both the Shaman and Castandea famous in the series of Don Juan books --- and Castaneda incredibly rich. Castaneda wrote about using a plant called Sacred Datura in a spritual rite that sent him into other worlds of consciousness. Meighan followed up with:
"His informant knew a great deal about Datura, which was a drug used in initiating ceremonies by some California groups, but had presumed by me and I think most other anthropologists to have passed out of the picture 40 or 50 years ago."
(source)
Professors, anthropologists, and archaeologists, like Meighan, contributing to or influencing Carlos Castaneda:
Books by Clement Meighan are:
- The Maru Cult of the Pomo Indians 1972
- The Archaeology of Amapa, Nayarit 1977
- Prehistoric Trails of Atacama 1980
Resources
Who's Who in America. 45th edition. Vol. 2. Marquis Who's Who. 1988.
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