Whoda thunk? Tomorrow is today already. (And how weird is it replying to myself? Yikes. 
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Thompson’s book is subtitled “Mythology, Sexuality & the Origins of Culture”. It is a very different reading of the archaeological and anthropological record, which was far ahead of its time when written over 40 years ago. Thompson does not fall into the mainstream Rousseauan/Hobbsean assumption that primitives were not just, well, primitive, but childlike, even violent rather than innocent. Sure, we have had perennial problems getting along with one another, but the very notion of “culture” presupposes that groups larger than families or clans can, and do, associate long enough to develop structures that facilitate such associations. In a sense, he offers one answer to the question, "How did we, as a species, get started on our road to, well, “progress” or “perdition”, depending on how you want to critique our current state of being.
What he also introduces in this text, is his notion of Wissenskunst [lit. “art of knowing”] which he juxtaposes to the German word for “science”, namely Wissenschaft [lit. “knowing-ship”]. In the German mind, any structured, ordered, focused, or systematic way of exploring some field of study is a “science”, not merely math or physics or economics. The word Wissenschaft avoids the pejorative overtones of the word “science” in English, and his notion of Wissenskunst prefigures in many ways current alternative approaches to subjects such as philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and more, such as, say, Campagna’s Technic and Magic or John’s suggestion of Avanesessian & Hennig’s Metanoia (both mentioned elsewhere).
This most certainly applies to Graeber & Wengrow’s recent re-reading of the early human record in The Dawn of Everything: A New History or Humanity. In stark contrast to, say, Harari’s Sapiens: A[n anything but] Brief History of Humankind (that I read in parallel to Graeber & Wengrow 
, and which I consider to be the “party line version of the story”), Graeber & Wengrow consider an alternative path of unfoldment of what it means to be human and why. They believe the evidence shows a much greater degree of interaction amongst large numbers of humans over a very long period of time; interactions that were not necessarily (but also, at times) violent. In this regard, their tome more or less covers the same ground as Thompson’s ruminations, but focusing more on the anthropological and archaeological aspects, rather than the magical/mythological and biological emphasized by Thompson.
Thompson’s book is manageable (ca. 250 pp.), but Graeber & Wengrow’s is anything but (weighing in at around 700 pp.). To get a feel for both and to provide a sound basis for both cognitive (and practical) consideration of the two, however, reading Thompson’s “Prologue” (ca. 38 pp.) which presents an overview of where he want to go with his case and Graeber & Wengrow’s “Conclusion” (ca. 34 pp.) which presents a summary of their presentation might be a worthwhile exercise.
Of course, it would not be necessary that we read both before getting together: it is certainly thinkable that we engage one for one get-togehter and the other for the next one, and maybe have then a third even – to pick up on Maia’s suggestion – for a “lab section”, whereby such could perhaps be possible for each individually as well. (I’m not clear enough yet on what or how these practical sections might be structured to say one way or the other.) At any rate, that is the short version of what I was thinking eight months ago.
The other book that was mentioned was Thompson’s Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science. This is still “early” Thompson (from 1989) and could be thought of an example of what he was talking about with his notion of Wissenskunst. It’s been a long while since I read it last, but what I do remember most poignantly is his absolutely brilliant interpretation of the Rapunzel fairy tale, in which myth and science are shown to be mutually reinforcing rather than oppositional and debilitating. This is overall a manageable text (<200 pp.) and, given Thompson’s writing style, very accessible. So this is certainly something worth thinking about reading together, and it might also be well suited to “lab sections” as well.
What is more, I did some checking around, and if anyone does not have ready access to either book, all are available online at the Internet Archive, which costs nothing to access (other than a registration): Graeber & Wengrow is generally available; Thompson’s books are “borrrowable” online.
Whatay’all think?