Mass Inhumation and the Execution of Witches in the American Southwest

Abstract

Recent analyses of prehistoric multiple inhumations in Anasazi sites in the American Southwest have argued that cannibalism best explains evidence of defleshing, cutting, and bone breakage. The validity of this explanation is questioned in a review of ethnohistoric and ethnographic literature on Pueblo witchcraft and witch execution. A model based on Puebloan procedures for witch destruction is offered which accounts for osteological patterning in the archaeological record as well as contextual and artifactual evidence not considered previously. [Anasazi, Pueblo Indians, cannibalism, witchcraft] I n the late 1960s, the publication of a "secondary burial" from the Polacca Wash site in northeastern Arizona initiated a series of studies arguing that cannibalism was practiced by the prehistoric Puebloan cultures of the American Southwest (Olson 1966; Turner 1983; White 1992). Except for a few responses (Baker 1990; Bullock 1994; Walker 1993), the evidence for cannibalism has rarely been questioned or seriously tested, and few alternatives have been proposed. This paper presents an alternative argument to the assertion that cannibalism was practiced. I intend to demonstrate that Pueblo and Navajo beliefs about witches include an intimate and specific association between cannibalistic acts and becoming a witch. This association and the negative connotations and fear of becoming a witch may preclude anthropophagy even under extreme dietary stress. In fact, Pueblo aggression against witches classified as cannibals includes complex rituals of execution involving systematic dismemberment and burning. These behaviors better explain the material remains found archaeologically and provide a strong argument against cannibalism as a dietary practice. Southwestern Mass InhumationsMore than 30 mass inhumations have been identified in the American Southwest in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. These cases are typically classified as Anasazi because they generally occur in the Four Corners region from the early Pueblo II to Pueblo IH periods, approximately AD. 950-1300 (see Figure 1 and Table 1). While the term Anasazi covers a very broad geographic area marked by numerous distinct subtraditions or cultures, the archaeological cases of human dismemberment and mass internment span these subregions and also occur in the protohistoric or post-Anasazi period.Reviews of many of the better-known cases of human dismemberment and defleshing are provided in studies by Turner (1983), Baker (1990), and White (1992). A detailed summary of the osteological patterning is unnecessary given the thoroughness of White's work, and it is the osteological patterning that is generally accepted by both critics and supporters of the "cannibalism theory." In brief, inhumations of the sort listed in Table 1 contain from 1 to 30 individuals, including both sexes ranging in age from juvenile to adult. Osteological analyses indicate a high degree of perimortem bone modification, which includes some or all of the following characteristics: perimort...