The ‘secret and bloody war path’: movement, place and conflict in the archaeological landscape of North America

Abstract

Interpreting paths and trails remains problematic for archaeologists working within the landscape paradigm. The perspective offered in this paper suggests that paths and trails are meaningful places in their own right, engaging other nodes within the landscape but with a particular significance emerging from the specific associations of movement, with all aspects presenting complex issues of archaeological interpretation. The difficulty of fitting paths and trails into a space/place dichotomy mirrors broad conceptual deficiencies in understanding such features and the methodological challenge presented by ambiguous archaeological evidence. This paper explores these issues, in particular the relationship between movement, paths and conflict as expressed in the idea of 'the war path', an eighteenth-century conceptualization of indigenous patterns of movement on the American frontier.

A Least Cost Analysis: Correlative Modeling of the Chaco Regional Road System

“…Many additional hypotheses regarding the use(s) of Chaco roads have been postulated. Past interpretations include economic mobility (Allan & Broster 1978;Ebert & Hitchcock 1980;Marshall et al 1979;Morenon 1977;Snygg & Windes 1998;Winter 1980;Vivian 1997), religious and symbolic connection (Fowler & Stein 1992;Sofaer, Marshall & Sinclair 1989;Vivian 1990Vivian , 1997Van Dyke 2004), military movement (Wilcox 1993;Snead 2011), regional connectivity, and visual and/or costly signaling (Kantner & Vaughn 2012;Lekson 1991;Roney 1992;Vivian 1991;Van Dyke et al 2016). While hypotheses regarding military movement have been widely refuted, most of the above explanations have persisted as possible interpretations for the use of Chaco roads.…”