Eating People can't just be a hobby

Cannibalism part 3

   "We think that certain groups in the Mesa Verde area, out of desperation, then turned to a strategy of warfare and cannibalism. One or more of the communities in this area decided on this as a political strategy, to push the new groups back out of die area and give themselves more resources. Plus, the message would be delivered to other communities that `You'd better not mess with us.' It would so terrorize people that they would never think of messing with you" The carnage was indeed extensive. Billman estimate that between 60 and 100 people lived in the nine dwellings at Cowboy Wash. In the four dwellings he has excavated so far, he turned up the remains of 24 people.
   Billman says two distinct patterns of human remains at several suspected cannibalism sites support his terrorism theory. In one pattern, which was also observed at Cowboy Wash, human remains were scattered on floors, and the dwellings abandoned soon after. In the other, remains were not left lying about but were dumped into pits or unused rooms. Billman thinks the first pattern occurred in victims' home, where they were cut up and consumed. The second pattern occurred in sites belonging to the perpetrators, who continued to use their homes after processing the bodies. "At the Mancos Canyon site, which is only 12 miles fro Cowboy Wash, 30 to 40 people were found in trash dumps. They might have been people who were taken to that village and consumed there." Likewise, the meat-laden leg bones missing fro Cowboy Wash were probably carried off be eaten later at secondary sites. At any rate, that is what Billman suspects, based on how hunters typically handle large game.
   "We think that certain groups in the Mesa Verde area, out of desperation, then turned to a strategy of warfare and cannibalism. One or more of the communities in this area decided on this as a political strategy, to push the new groups back out of die area and give themselves more resources. Plus, the message would be delivered to other communities that `You'd better not mess with us.' It would so terrorize people that they would never think of messing with you" The carnage was indeed extensive. Billman estimate that between 60 and 100 people lived in the nine dwellings at Cowboy Wash. In the four dwellings he has excavated so far, he turned up the remains of 24 people.
   Billman says two distinct patterns of human remains at several suspected cannibalism sites support his terrorism theory. In one pattern, which was also observed at Cowboy Wash, human remains were scattered on floors, and the dwellings abandoned soon after. In the other, remains were not left lying about but were dumped into pits or unused rooms. Billman thinks the first pattern occurred in victims' home, where they were cut up and consumed. The second pattern occurred in sites belonging to the perpetrators, who continued to use their homes after processing the bodies. "At the Mancos Canyon site, which is only 12 miles fro Cowboy Wash, 30 to 40 people were found in trash dumps. They might have been people who were taken to that village and consumed there." Likewise, the meat-laden leg bones missing fro Cowboy Wash were probably carried off be eaten later at secondary sites. At any rate, that is what Billman suspects, based on how hunters typically handle large game.
   At least half the suspect incidents of cannibalism at the sites he reviewed occurred around 1150. "When call this can `outbreak' of cannibalism. It looks like before this there was a very low level of cannibalism, then with this severe drought and social turmoil a few groups turned to terroristic violence." By the early 1200s, he notes, climatic conditions were back to normal and there were very few incidents of cannibalism. Around this tie, too, the inhabitants of Mesa Verde moved from the pueblos on top of the mesa to the cliff dwellings in the sheltered cliff alcoves, a move some say was taken because the cliff dwellings were more easily defended.
   Researchers have proposed other motivations for the alleged cannibalism, but they just don't fit the scenario, he adds. If the perpetrators had been goaded by hunger, he says, they would have been more likely to leave the area and search for food rather than resort to such drastic measures. Hunger-induced cannibalism typically occurs in groups that are trapped, such as the Donner party, which was caught by a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada in 1846. The people of the Cowboy Wash site had no such constraints. And besides, most of the victims appear to have been done away with in one fell swoop -- not a prudent use of resources if you're starving.
   Christy Turner, a bioarcheologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, agrees with the terrorism theory but thinks the explanation for it is even more complex. Anasazi culture bears signs of trade with Mexico,, such as copper bells, macaws, and corn. During this time central Mexico was in social turmoil, says Turner, and hundreds of cults sprang up. Some members may have fled north, bringing not only distinctive trade goods but, possibly, flesh-eating rituals too. Plenty of evidence for such rituals occurs in historical accounts and in the archeological record of central Mexico, says Turner, and the practice was often used to intimidate neighboring tribes. Another possibly is that cannibalism might have developed indenpendently -- but for similar reasons -- in the Four Corners region. It may, for example, be linked to a strategy for social control by inhabitants of Chaco Canyon, a New Mexico community of several thousands Anasazi that lay some 80 miles south of Mesa Verde. Chaco Canyon was a hub of Anasazi culture, and any scholars think it had great political and social influence over outlying communities.
   The details of that particular scenario are sketchy, and Turner, who is at work on a book about the subject, won't elaborate. But Billman doesn't think the evidence supports that theory. He contends that the major outbreak of cannibalism actually occurred after Chaco Canyon was abandoned in the 1140s. Moreover, nobody knows where the former residents of Chaco Canyon went. Billman thinks it more likely that the victims at Cowboy Wash came from the Chuska Mountains, some 60 miles of the site. What both hypotheses share, however, is the idea that neighboring groups were using cannibalism as a terrorist strategy to drive out competition for scarce resources.
   rolite. as the preserved specimen is called, indicates that its owner's last meal was almost entirely animal protein. Determining just what type of animal -- elk, deer, or human -- the protein came from will be the job of Richard Marlar, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Colorado at Denver. He heard about the Cowboy Wash coprolite and offered to analyze its contents.
   There is no shortage of speculation on the causes of the suspected cannibalism. But do the bones really tell a tale cannibalism? With no eyewitnesses, can anyone really be sure of what happened at Cowboy Wash eight and a half centuries ago?
   "How do you tell that a person committed a murder when nobody saw it?" asks Tim White, a physical anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley. "Evidence." White has closely examined the bones found at Mancos Canyon, and both he and Turner have proposed criteria that they say must be met to make a finding of cannibalism. Among them are cut marks, burn patterns, broken bones and "pot polish," the way sharply fragmented bone gets rounded by rattling around in a pot of boiling water. "The question we need to ask is, Do people, prepare other mammals in this fashion in this culture? Because humans are large animals. If you find that the patterning matches, then that becomes evidence, " says White.
   Turner, Billman, and others agree that, by these criteria, evidence from many southwestern sites, including Cowboy Wash, clearly indicates cannibalism. But Peter Bullock, a staff archeologist at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, is not ready to convict. He says that basing such studies on animal-butchering practices biases the results toward a consumption conclusion and fails to consider human motivations,, and scorched as a result of warfare, mutilation, or burial practices, he says. As an example, Bullock cites human remains recovered from the Battle of Little Bighorn, where General George Custer and his troops were slain. "The results looked pretty similar to this cannibalism stuff, but we know from historical accounts that no cannibalism took place," he says. Kurt Dongoske, an archeologist employed by the Hopi, agrees. "To say that these disarticulated remains have been cannibalized is real stretch."