The Bioarchaeology of Violence

6. Bioarchaeological Signatures of Strife in Terminal Pueblo III Settlements in the Northern San Juan

6 Bioarchaeological Signatures of Strife in Terminal Pueblo III Settlements in the Northern San Juan Kristin A. Kuckelman Introduction Ancestral Pueblo farmers inhabited the northern San Juan area of the American Southwest for two millennia before completely and permanently vacating the region about ad 1280. The catalysts and societal context for this population movement, which brought about monumental changes in the Pueblo world, have been the subject of speculation by archaeologists and the public for many decades. Recent research into the causes of this complete depopulation has revealed some factors responsible for this exodus, including a complex array of conditions that began to render the region inhospitable, if not uninhabitable, by the mid-1270s. Numerous and interrelated factors such as severe drought, dense population , resource depletion, cooler temperatures, disrupted seasonal precipitation patterns, truncated growing seasons, environmental degradation, dietary stress, social turmoil, and outbreaks of violence have all been implicated (Ahlstrom, Van West, and Dean 1995; Benson 2006; Cameron 1995; Cameron and Duff 2008; Cordell 1997, 365–397; Cordell et al. 2007; Dean et al. 2000; Dean and Van West 2002; Glowacki 2006, 2010; Kohler 2000, 2010; Kohler, Varien, and Wright 2010; Kohler et al. 2008; Kuckelman 2002, 2006, 2010a, 2010b; Kuckelman, Lightfoot, and Martin 2002; Larsen et al. 1996; Lipe 1995; Lipe and Varien 1999, 339–343; Petersen 122 · Kristin A. Kuckelman 1994; Petersen and Matthews 1987; Salzer 2000; Van West and Dean 2000; Varien et al. 1996; Varien et al. 2007; Wright 2006, 2010). Perhaps the most direct and intriguing evidence of the circumstances associated with this depopulation can be found on the remains of Pueblo residents themselves, those who perished in their villages as migrations from the region were under way. Recent bioarchaeological and contextual analyses of human remains from terminal Pueblo III sites in the northern San Juan region reveal abundant and compelling evidence of conflict and other turmoil associated with regional depopulation. In this chapter, I review the evidence of strife on human remains found in abandonment contexts from sites that have been conclusively dated to the terminal portion of the Pueblo III period. I then examine what these data suggest about the roles of violence and aggression in late Pueblo society in the northern San Juan. Recent excavations by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center at the sites of three distinct villages that were constructed, occupied, and vacated during the final 20 to 30 years of regional occupation have yielded bioarchaeological, taphonomic, and contextual evidence of a significant level of strife and other hardship just before the region was depopulated, about ad 1280. Human remains from the Sand Canyon, Castle Rock, and Goodman Point pueblos, located in what is today the Four Corners area of the U.S. Southwest, exhibit evidence of trauma associated with depopulation . This evidence and additional indicators of violence and strife reveal that the occupations of these villages ended as a result of devastating attacks that were probably perpetrated with multiple goals in mind. The human remains found in abandonment contexts at these three sites that exhibit evidence of violence are the only published assemblages that have been firmly tree-ring-dated to the final few decades of regional occupation. The osteological and taphonomic evidence of strife on these remains thus reflects turmoil that can be firmly associated temporally with the complete depopulation of the region. The associated stratigraphic , depositional, architectural, contextual, and tree-ring data offer unparalleled and invaluable insights about those who perished as well as the societal contexts, conditions, actions, and events that ended the occupations of individual villages and the region as a whole. Evidence of various forms of strife that might have resulted from discord associated with regional depopulation has been found on human Bioarchaeological Signatures of Strife in the Northern San Juan · 123 remains from numerous other sites, such as La Plata 23 (White 1992, 367–368), La Plata 33 (Morris 1939, 82), Long House (Nordenskiöld 1979 [1893], 170), Charnel House Tower (Turner and Turner 1999, 141–143), Alkali Ridge Site 13 (Brues 1946, 328), San Juan River NA7166 (Turner and Turner 1999, 335), Site 5MT9943 (Lambert 1999), and Salmon Pueblo (Akins 2008; Shipman 2006; Turner and Turner 1999). I excluded these cases from this study because of outdated or ambiguous analytic data, or because dating was too imprecise to confidently attribute these incidents to the final few years of regional occupation. At Site 5MT9943, for example, on the Ute Mountain piedmont, three...