Journal Issue: Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Violence
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2012-10-05
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From the Editor: Special Poster Presentation Issue
(2012-05-01) Perez, Ventura R.
Taphonomic and Skeletal Indicators of Captivity and Violence in the Southwest (AD 1000-1300)
Martin, Debra L
Violence against women especially as a result from raiding and abduction of women was a common and world-wide phenomenon that has been part of human history for a very long time. Its persistence into today’s globalized commodity market, where women are used as sex and domestic slaves against their will, demonstrates how institutionalized this form of violence is. Gendered violence is found in many different contexts, but it is most sustained in groups that practice raiding and abduction of women (and often children). Raiding, as part of endemic warfare strategies, is cyclical and part of a long-term strategy with economic and political implications for both males and females. How can these kinds of practices be empirically supported by the bioarchaeological record and what are the effects of these practices? The taphonomic and mortuary component of human remains is crucial in answering these questions. The bioarchaeological signature of forced captivity includes healed head wounds, healed broken bones, and a variety of trauma-related musculo-skeletal changes. Women in unusual mortuary configurations with healed fractures, inflamed muscles, infections, and other signs of abuse reveal the biological costs of this form violence.
The Taphonomy of a Sacrifice: Burial 6 of the Patio Hundido at el Teul
Perez, Ventura R.; Jiménez Betts, Peter
El Teul’s eighteen centuries of continuous occupation, from ca. 200 b. c. e. till the Spanish conquest in 1531 offers a unique opportunity to understand aspects of ancient society in Southern Zacatecas. This poster focuses on a ritually-sacrificed male whose body was deposited as an offering in one of the main architectural complexes of the site during the early to mid-Classic (ca. 200 d.C. – 400/450 d.C.). Ritual landscape models currently applied to larger sites such as Teotihuacán using Huichol cosmology suggest the possible correspondence of this building with ritual sacrifice related to winter solstice with Venus playing an active role.
Contextualizing Death and Trauma at Canyon del Muerto
Stone, Pamela K
This poster explores how human taphonomy offers insight to understanding the structural violence that impacted the discovery, recovery, and analysis of human remains from sites within Canyon del Muerto, (400-1300AD). Also included in this analysis is a discussion of the temporal relationship of these sites juxtaposed with the rise and fall of the Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon complexes focusing on the role of interpersonal violence, discussed through the analysis of death-related forces. These ideas are then presented within an examination of indirect forms of structural violence, which often mitigated the physical violence endured by this population.
Taphonomy After the Fact: Violence and Ritual in Room 33 at Chaco and Room 178 at Aztec
Harrod, Ryan P; Martin, Debra L; Carlyle, Shawn W
Chaco Canyon‘s Room 33 (excavated by George Pepper) and Aztec Ruins room 178 (excavated by Earl Morris) are recognized for their rich taphonomic context. These two mortuary features reveal a great deal of information about ritualized behavior. Researchers such as Akins and Palkovich have provided partial analyses of the Chaco skeletal material in the 1980s. The reanalysis of those remains considers the Chaco burials in relation to those at Aztec and analyzes their meaning through a thorough analysis of the grave goods, archaeological records, and ethnohistorical documents to provide a better understanding of these elaborate and unique mortuary rooms. Specifically, this study focuses on signatures of identity, biological, cultural, and socioeconomic. Biological identity markers include age, sex, and stature. Cultural identity includes mortuary context, graves goods, and site layout. Socioeconomic identity, which is the hardest to reconstruct is evidenced by the frequency and distribution of trauma related to exposure to violence, changes to anatomy related to unequal amounts of labor, and susceptibility to diseases over time. The result of looking at all these factors is that it is possible to reconstruct identity, such as Burial 3672 in Room 33. This male is especially intriguing because the burial shows evidence of extensive perimortem fractures on the cranium suggesting a violent death, and yet this is a very high status individual based on the stature and isotopic analysis as well as the grave offerings he was interred with. These kinds of taphonomic and mortuary features are explored.