Largo-Gallina Towers: An Explanation

Abstract

Excavation in Largo-Gallina phase sites supports the interpretation that towers were primarily defensive structures. There is some evidence that towers also had a storage use. It is interesting to note that the use of defensive and specialized, village-wide storage structures coincides temporally with a period of environmental deterioration in the American Southwest.

Cannibalism in Chaco Canyon: The charnel pit excavated in 1926 at Small House ruin by Frank H.H. Roberts, Jr.

“…There is no doubt that there was warfare and raiding among the Anasazi (Haas, 1990;Mackey and Green, 1979;Upham and Reed, 1989;Wilcox and Haas, 1989;Woodbury, 1958). Accounts of historic Puebloan vio-lence and possible cannibalism begin with the very first foreign contact.…”

Cannibalism in the Prehistoric American Southwest. Occurrence, Taphonomy, Explanation, and Suggestions for Standardized World Definition.

“…Until recently, conflict and warfare were given little attention in the study of the evolution of South westcultures (Haas, 1990;Haas and Creamer, 1993;Hurst and Turner, 1993;Mackey and Green, 1979). There are no clear-cut examples of Southwest skeletal re mainsindicating human sacrifice, although decapitation and taking of trophy heads as well as scalping were practiced as early as Basketmaker II times (200 B.C.…”

Communication in the Chaco World: A Consideration of Time and Labor Mobilization

“…An overview of Indigenous North American signaling using fire and smoke (Beers 2014) indicates that this form of communication was primarily for warning of danger or locating hunting parties. Several archaeological studies in the American Southwest (other than Chaco) also emphasize warning functions (Haas and Creamer 1993; Mackey and Green 1979). To our knowledge, there are no ethnographic examples from the Puebloan area for conveying messages via signaling other than binary information, such as the presence or absence of people in a particular place (and this seems to be based on a single, secondhand account reported by Ellis [1991]).…”