Dismembering the Trope: Imagining Cannibalism in the Ancient Pueblo World (original) (raw)
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Calendrical Stations in Chaco Canyon
Archaeologists differ about the relative importance of political power, ritual activities, trade, and pilgrimage in the Chacoan regional system. Nonetheless, there seems to be agreement that visual astronomy played a role, at least to provide a calendar for periodic events. We describe locations in Chaco Canyon that may have served as primary calendrical stations for establishing dates to anticipate and confirm the solstices as well as identify the full moon closest to solstice. Most of these sites are associated with December solstice and are contained in or close to Late Bonito structures such as Wijiji, Kin Kletso, and Headquarters Site A. The calendrical station at Piedra del Sol could have provided the dates of June solstice necessary for positioning the spiral petroglyph of the Fajada Butte three-slab site. The highest point of West Mesa as viewed from the great house of Casa del Rio may have been a very early winter solstice marker. An intriguing site for observing December solstice sunrise is close to two ruins that range in occupation dates from before A.D. 900 to 1200; these are located southeast of Wijiji and were excavated by Roberts in the 1920s. This site contains Puebloan and Navajo cultural material and may have been associated with Basketmaker III or early Pueblo I occupation of Shabik’eschee Village. A visual communication system supporting organization of calendar-driven community ritual may have extended from the shrines of West Mesa to the eastern edge of Chaco Canyon near Wijiji.
A chapter excluded from the edited volume, Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2008).
Interpreting and Reinterpreting Sacred Ridge: Placing Extreme Processing in a Larger Context
Kiva, 2018
Assemblages consisting of fragmented, cut, and burned human bone in the prehistoric Southwest have a long history of both analysis and controversy. How do we interpret violence and destruction of the body that occurred hundreds to thousands of years ago? Two basic models have emerged with regard to these assemblages: cannibalism (as primarily codified by the work of Turner) and extreme processing (as developed by Kuckelman and colleagues). These two models are discussed in this article, as is their development and interpretive power. Through the lens of Sacred Ridge, a large Pueblo I assemblage dating to approximately A.D. 810 in southwestern Colorado, the different interpretations of violence in the Southwest are interrogated. This study highlights the importance of placing assemblages that are heavily fragmented with high degrees of perimortem violence, tool marks, and burning into larger regional and temporal contexts.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2010
Recent excavations at the Sacred Ridge Site, just south of the town of Durango, Colorado, have uncovered the single largest deposit (to date) of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest. This deposit dates to the very late eighth or very early ninth century A.D. and therefore represents an incidence of large-scale violence and perimortem mutilation dating to the Pueblo I period (A.D. 700– 900), when initial village formation occurred in the northern San Juan Region of the Southwest. Expectations for various interpretations for the Sacred Ridge assemblage are generated based on previous research and cross-cultural data on cannibalism, warfare, and human bone processing. Based on a lack of fit with previous models developed to account for extreme processing (EP) events, including starvation cannibalism, warfare and social intimidation, and witch-craft accusations, it is proposed that the Sacred Ridge massacre was the result of ethnic conflict during the Pueblo I period.