“Being from Vegas, I put my money on
witch execution at Sacred Ridge,” Martin
says. Food shortages and other mounting troubles could have sparked witch
accusations against an entire extended
family or clan, she proposes.
Martin’s account sounds plausible
to anthropologist Richard Chacon
of Winthrop University in Rock Hill,
S.C. Chacon has conducted fieldwork
among several Native American societies in South America, including
Achuar blowgun hunters in Ecuador
and Yora bow-and-arrow hunters in
Peru. Villagers in these societies often
attribute epidemics and other community misfortunes to witchcraft practiced
by shamans and others living in neighboring villages, Chacon says. Warriors
who kill alleged witches
are considered heroes for
having performed a vital
public service, he notes.
That includes the torture
and killing of children
accused of sorcery.
skeletons And bone: Courtesy of s WCA environmentAl ConsultAnts; grAph: t. dubÉ
Bones from Sacred Ridge
display many attributes of
witch executions, acknowledges Potter. But, he holds,
the 35 or more victims at
Sacred Ridge “would be an
unprecedented number of
people found guilty and executed at one time as a result
of witchcraft accusations.”
Historical accounts of Zuni
and other Pueblo witch trials typically describe one
accused sorcerer, and in
rare cases several.
More broadly, Chacon
says, research at Sacred
Ridge counters claims by
some scholars that prehistoric Pueblo people
never fought, instead living
in harmony with nature and
each other. “That stereotype robs Native American
peoples of their humanity,”
he says. “Every group I’ve
worked with has a long history of violent conflicts.”
Attacks by one group on a culturally, religiously or ethnically different
group undoubtedly occurred in ancient
times, in all parts of the world, remarks
archaeologist Kristin Kuckelman of
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in
Cortez, Colo. Kuckelman’s excavations
suggest that devastating attacks and
possible cannibalism occurred around
1270 at three large Pueblo villages in
the Four Corners region. A desire to
eliminate and intimidate competitors
for scarce food apparently motivated
those attacks, she says.
But reasons for the massacre at
Sacred Ridge remain puzzling, she cau-
tions. Burned remains of a few people
who met violent ends around the
same time at three other Ridges Basin
villages have been uncovered, so retalia-
tory raids by members of hostile villages
may have culminated in extreme brutal-
ity at Sacred Ridge, Kuckelman suggests.
Tallying tool marks bone fragments recovered from sacred ridge (including the hip bone at bottom right)
show signs of tool marks, suggesting bodies were mutilated. the skeletons below document where marks were
observed on various individuals and the graph shows the percent of selected fragments with marks.
Tool-marked bones at Sacred Ridge
Upper arm bone Cervical vertebrae 1 or 2 Face
Kneecap
Collar-
bone
Sacrum
sourCe: s WCA environmentAl ConsultAnts
scrape marks
Cut marks
Chop marks
www.sciencenews.org
november 6, 2010 | science news | 25
