Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMR-2346

by Tim D. White

Overview

Cannibalism is one of the oldest and most emotionally charged topics in anthropological literature. Tim White's analysis of human bones from an Anasazi pueblo in southwestern Colorado, site 5MTUMR-2346, reveals that nearly thirty men, women, and children were butchered and cooked there around A.D. 1100. Their bones were fractured for marrow, and the remains discarded in several rooms of the pueblo. By comparing the human skeletal remains with those of animals used for food at other sites, the author analyzes evidence for skinning, dismembering, cooking, and fracturing to infer that cannibalism took place at Mancos. As White evaluates claims for cannibalism in ethnographic and archaeological contexts worldwide, he describes how cultural biases can often distort the interpretation of scientific data. This book applies and introduces anatomical, taphonomic, zooarchaeological, and forensic methods in the investigation of prehistoric human behavior. It is an important example of how we can exchange opinion for knowledge. "Cannibalism is a controversial topic because many people do not want to believe that their prehistoric ancestors engaged in such activity, but they will be hard put to reject this meticulous study."—Kent V. Flannery, University of Michigan "This is the best piece of detailed research yet to appear that seeks to put in place a body of justified knowledge and a procedure for its use in making inferences about the past. No student of bones can ignore this work."—Lewis R. Binford, University of New Mexico "This could be one of the most important books in archaeology written in the last decade."—James F. O'Connell, University of Utah "Paleontologists and zooarchaeologists, archaeologists and physical anthropologists, taphonomists, and forensic scientists should all read this work. Quite frankly, I think this will become one of the most important books of the 1990s..."—R. Lee Lyman, University of Missouri-Columbia

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691609034
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #132
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.10(d)

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Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMRâ?"2346

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By Tim D. White

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09467-0

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CHAPTER 1

The Trail to Mancos

Why would a physical anthropologist who has worked primarily on Pliocene hominid fossils from Africa be drawn to the archaeology of the American Southwest? There is a vast gulf between the hominids of Ethiopia's Afar depression and the Anasazi inhabitants of southwestern Colorado in the dimensions of time, space, anatomy, and behavior. Yet a fossil from the Afar posed questions that led me down a trail to Mancos Canyon.

ETHIOPIA

In several respects, this study is rooted in the year 1973. That year French geologist Maurice Taieb was joined in Ethiopia by American graduate student Donald Johanson. They discovered remains of the first hominid from Hadar, Ethiopia—a knee joint. Taieb had surveyed much of the area to the north and south of Hadar—thousands of square kilometers—but had chosen Hadar as a place to begin the research because of its diverse Pliocene fossils. The choice was a good one and by the late 1970s the abundant harvest of fossils from Hadar provided fresh insights into human evolution (Johanson et al., 1982, and references therein). The area along the Awash River to the immediate south of Hadar is called the Middle Awash. It was not until work was well underway at Hadar that the Middle Awash yielded its first hominid fossil, a nearly complete cranium associated with Acheulean artifacts at a site called Bodo. The work there was led by Jon KaIb, a former associate of Johanson and Taieb at Hadar.

The Bodo cranium was described as a late Homo erectus, or "archaic" Homo sapiens, by its discoverers (Conroy et al., 1978). In 1981 I was asked by Desmond Clark to accompany him on a survey of the Middle Awash at Bodo and other sites. Before departing from the capitol, Addis Ababa, Clark asked to have a look at the Bodo cranium housed at the National Museum of Ethiopia. It was an unforgettable introduction. The massive specimen was completely fossilized, its surface almost perfectly preserved. As it was lifted out of its carrying case and rested upon the table in one of the old museum laboratories, I noticed a set of fine, deep incisions that crossed the left zygomaticomaxillary suture below the orbit. These were obviously not preparator's marks and did not resemble carnivore damage. Further cleaning and analysis revealed the striae to be cutmarks made before the cranium had been fossilized. More marks were found beneath the matrix, inside the orbit, and on the vault (White, 1985, 1986).

The 1981 field season in the Middle Awash was very productive. An additional hominid was found at Bodo, Pliocene hominid fossils were recovered, excavations were undertaken, and the first samples to yield radiometric dates were analyzed (Clark et al., 1984). When the Bodo scratches were confirmed as cutmarks after our return to Berkeley, the question of what they meant continued to haunt us.

ANCIENT CANNIBALS?

I first turned to the literature on fossil hominids to see whether similar marks had been reported elsewhere. The search revealed an abundance of claims about early hominid violence. The tales of cannibalistic feasts at Choukoutien and other sites that are part of every beginning student's introduction to anthropology were repeated more emphatically the farther one got from the original source. Lewis Binford's Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981) had been published by this time, and it was clear that a study of perimortem and postmortem trauma to original hominid fossils from Australopithecus to Neanderthal was called for. As background to that research, conducted by myself and Nick Toth in 1986,1 began a survey of the ethnographic literature dealing with postmortem modification of human skeletal remains. I got about as far as Bill Arens' The Man Eating Myth (1979) before realizing that the contemporary record was essentially mute regarding the osteological manifestations of cannibalism. Knowing of Christy Turner's conclusions on cannibalism drawn from recent osteological material in the American Southwest, I turned to that part of the archaeological record.

MANCOS CANYON

The year 1973 had been an auspicious one in southwestern Colorado as well as in the Afar. During salvage excavation of an Anasazi pueblo (site 5MTUMR–2346; c. A.D. 1100) broken and scattered bones representing approximately thirty humans had been recovered by a team from the University of Colorado Mesa Verde Research Center under the general supervision of David Breternitz. The sample of over two thousand bone fragments was first reported on by Nickens (1975).

I was introduced to the Mancos Canyon 5MTUMR–2346 human bone collection in 1984. In comparing this sample with several others from the Southwest I concluded that it represented a unique research opportunity. The Mancos materials were excellently preserved and the sample was large enough for particular bones of the skeleton to be represented multiple times in different age groups. The bones had been recovered in situ during a modern archaeological excavation. The assemblage was essentially unmixed with other fauna and the entire pueblo had been excavated. The integrity of the assemblage promised to reveal insights into its formation.

I borrowed the Mancos Canyon 5MTUMR–2346 collection in the summer of 1985 and worked on it through 1990. Initial consultation of the Mancos sample was made to provide a background for work on Neanderthal fossils. It was apparent on my introduction to the Mancos assemblage that it would yield significant additional data in several areas of prehistoric studies, building on the excellent work of Paul Nickens. In the years that followed, the significance of the Anasazi bones seemed to grow with each round of analysis.

OVERVIEW

This study of the Mancos 5MTUMR–2346 skeletal remains began as a way to probe the issue of Paleolithic cannibalism. The results of the study also may help to advance our understanding of the Anasazi. Of more general archaeological significance is the issue of how cannibalism is recognized in a prehistoric context.

The detailed analysis of the large Mancos sample represented a chance for physical anthropology to interface productively with prehistoric archaeology. The methods introduced in this book and the findings of the analysis have applications across the spatial breadth and temporal sweep of archaeological studies. The results of the analysis should be of interest to an audience beyond the geographic area of the American Southwest. Osteologists studying both modern and fossil hominid remains and archaeologists working on sites spanning the Paleolithic to the ethnographic present may find that these results have analytical and comparative relevance to their work.

The questions the Mancos analysis raised and the insights it provided about recording and quantification in faunal analysis are common to all archaeologists. For example, problems of identifying burning on osteological material are of general archaeological concern. The recognition of new categories of bone damage, such as the pot polish and peeling described in Chapter 6, also has general significance. The unmixed nature of the Mancos sample provided a chance to study the effects of different levels of identification in archaeological faunal analysis. For this study the collection was maximally conjoined during the analysis and the results of this full conjoining are compared to the information available from the unconjoined sample. Comparable analytical detail is rarely available for single-taxon faunal assemblages of this size.

The Mancos study, as noted above, was initiated and driven by the need for critical analysis of the fossil evidence. The Mancos assemblage can form a part of the comparative foundation on which studies of hominid fossils can be built. Because of this, results of analysis on fossil hominids will be presented elsewhere.

Chapter 2 provides a background to questions involved with historic and prehistoric cannibalism. The record of cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest is reviewed in Chapter 3, where the archaeological context of the Mancos assemblage is also outlined. In Chapter 4 the analytical background to the assemblage is detailed, as well as the methods and results of conjoining (refitting the bone fragments). Chapter 5 introduces the skeletal biology of the Mancos people. In Chapter 6 the methodological background to the study of the Mancos osteological material is outlined and the attributes used in this analysis are defined, with an assessment of each attribute as it relates to work in zooarchaeology. Chapters 7 through 11 present the Mancos assemblage in an element-by-element manner, segregating the skeletal elements within the head, trunk, arm, leg, and hand/foot. Further quantitative aspects of the Mancos collection are outlined in Chapter 12, which compares results with those generated by more traditional zooarchaeological analyses. The concluding chapter summarizes the Mancos results and suggests some further applications in physical anthropology and archaeology. Appendix 1 provides a catalog of sites in the American Southwest from which evidence interpreted as consistent with prehistoric cannibalism has been recovered. Appendix 2 is a full catalog and data set for the Mancos 5MTUMR–2346 human bone assemblage. Appendix 3 provides a field and laboratory guide to the recovery and analysis of this kind of bone assemblage.

Discoveries in the Afar posed questions that formed a pathway leading to the Mancos Canyon sample. The significance of cutmarks on the Bodo cranium continues to be elusive, whereas the analytical methodology with which to assess future discoveries has grown. To Desmond Clark, who asked me to join him in Ethiopia, whose passion for prehistory knows no boundaries in time or space, and who was there when the trail began, I dedicate this book.

CHAPTER 2

Cannibalism Past and Present

Cannibalism, ancestral or contemporary, fascinates. One human's consumption of another is an activity, whether in fact or fantasy, which undoubtedly held the attention of the public and the scholarly community long before Herodotus provided us with the first written, but secondhand accounts. Human cannibalism is a behavior that continues to hold considerable interest for the anthropologist. Indeed, the study of cannibalism might appear to be one of the only remnants of anthropological turf on which the research of ethnologists, archaeologists, and physical anthropologists might still be supported simultaneously (see Figure 2.1). Hay den succinctly (1981:344) reminds us, however, of the diminishing role of ethnography: "... hunter/gatherer societies are passing rapidly into the province of the archeologist and the prehistorian." That passage is now complete for human groups including, perhaps, hunter-gatherers who might have practiced cannibalism. As Wobst (1978:307) has noted:

Archaeologists are the only anthropologists whose data contain information about behavioral variance in all its dimensions.... Long after the ethnographic era of hunter-gatherer research will have passed into history, archaeologists will be busy removing the ethnographically imposed form and structure from their data and retrodicting both the ethnographic and archaeological record.

This is a book about 2,106 bone fragments from an Anasazi archaeological site in the Mancos Canyon of southwestern Colorado. It is a book about recognizing cannibalism in an archaeological context. Cannibalism is defined in this chapter and its potential signatures in the archaeological record are considered. To provide a global perspective on the Mancos assemblage, the claims and evidence for cannibalism in the hominid fossil record are briefly touched upon, some historical accounts of cannibalism are reviewed, and the archaeological record for this activity outside the American Southwest is briefly sampled.

DEFINING CANNIBALISM AND RECOGNIZING IT IN AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT

Coping with Bias

The accuracy of any reconstruction of prehistoric activities depends entirely upon the extent to which unambiguous interpretations can be based on material remains from archaeological contexts. Before proceeding to discuss standards of evidence to be used in the study of past human cannibalism, it is important to address the potential for modern human emotion and preconception to interfere with a rigorous analysis of the data. In a recent article considering a variety of responses to Arens' (1979) contention that cannibalism was never so widespread as portrayed, Kolata (1986:1500) notes that calling other people cannibals is "perhaps the ultimate derogatory comment." Given Arens' demonstration of how widespread such comment has been, it is no surprise that at least one anthropologist has stated: "The question of whether people are or ever were cannibals is very much tied into our views of who we are and what we are" (Trinkaus, in Kolata, 1986:1497). This describes a counterproductive posture. The question of whether people are or were cannibals may be "tied into" our modern values, but our effectiveness as scientists is grounded on our ability to recognize such bias and avoid it in our research. We must study the material evidence for cannibalism as we would study that left by any other human activity.

Defining Cannibalism

The first step in meeting the challenge of recognizing cannibalism in the archaeological record comes in defining the object of study, cannibalism. As Myers (1984:149) notes:

There is an absence of a clear definition of cannibalism, a practice encompassing an extremely broad and sometimes ambiguous range of behaviors. Cannibalism can include drinking waterdiluted ashes of a cremated relative, licking blood off a sword in warfare (Sagan 1974:56), masticating and subsequently vomiting a snippet of flesh (Brown and Tuzin 1983), celebrating Christian communion, or gnawing on entire barbecued limbs as De Bry depicts Caribs doing (1590–95). Accompanying these behaviors is a display of affect ranging from revulsion to reverence and enthusiasm.

In this book, human cannibalism is defined as the conspecific consumption of human tissue. Such intraspecific consumption is widespread in mammals and this definition is taken for granted by zoologists. In a recent literature survey, Polis et al. (1984) found 146 references documenting intraspecific predation in 75 species of mammals distributed among 7 orders. In the 15 primate species for which cannibalism has been observed, it is attributed to conspecific density factors, nutritional stress, or reproductive strategy. For humans, the definition of cannibalism used here encompasses all motives and functions of the consumption.

Criteria of Recognition

Binford (1978, 1981, 1984) has recently made major theoretical and empirical contributions to the ability of Paleolithic archaeologists to recognize patterns of damage and element representation in the skeletal remains of fauna recovered from archaeological sites. This work is built upon a long history of research that includes the important studies of Martin (1907), Pei (1938), Dart (1957a), Brain (1981a), and many others. These workers have inspired dozens of modern scholars in the active pursuit of methods to identify the variety of nonhuman agents that can modify archaeological bone assemblages. The result of this combined research is that it is increasingly possible to examine the context of bone assemblages, their composition, and the modification of their elements (cutmarks and hammerstone percussion, for example, versus trampling and/or carnivore and rodent gnawing) in order to illuminate past human activities. Attributes allowing the discrimination between perimortem bone modification (alteration of fresh bone either just before, at, or immediately after the time of death; Turner, 1983) and postdepositional alterations, and among various agencies of bone modification are better defined today as a result of research in the last two decades.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos 5MTUMRâ?"2346 by Tim D. White. Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. v
• Figures, pg. ix
• Tables, pg. xvii
• Preface, pg. xix
• Acknowledgments, pg. xxi
• CHAPTER 1. The Trail to Mancos, pg. 3
• CHAPTER 2. Cannibalism Past and Present, pg. 7
• CHAPTER 3. Cannibalism in the Prehistoric Southwest: Mancos 5MTUMR-2346 and Its Context, pg. 31
• CHAPTER 4. Analytical Background and Conjoining, pg. 65
• CHAPTER 5. The Mancos 5MTUMR-2346 Sample: A Biological Background, pg. 84
• CHAPTER 6. Method and Theory: Physical Anthropology Meets Zooarchaeology, pg. 100
• CHAPTER 7. The Head, pg. 164
• CHAPTER 8. The Thorax, Pelvis, and Shoulder Girdle, pg. 208
• CHAPTER 9. The Arm, pg. 238
• CHAPTER 10. The Leg, pg. 250
• CHAPTER 11. The Hand and Foot, pg. 268
• CHAPTER 12. Comparative Analysis, pg. 278
• CHAPTER 13. Evaluation, pg. 337
• Appendix 1. Catalog of Southwest Archaeological Sites with Evidence Interpreted as Indicating Cannibalism, pg. 367
• Appendix 2. Mancos 5MTUMR-2346 Human Bone Specimen Databases, pg. 382
• Appendix 3. Procedures for the Recovery and Analysis of Broken and Scattered Human Bone from Archaeological and Forensic Contexts, pg. 422
• Bibliography, pg. 427
• Index, pg. 459

Editorial Reviews

"What distinguishes White's effort from some of the more notable recent books about bones is that his original research is as impeccable as his theory.... [This book] will prove a major influence on those who analyze bone assemblages, whatever their provenance and origin, for years to come."

American Scientist

"What distinguishes White's effort from some of the more notable recent books about bones is that his original research is as impeccable as his theory.... [This book] will prove a major influence on those who analyze bone assemblages, whatever their provenance and origin, for years to come."—American Scientist

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