Ryan P. Harrod Assessing Conflict and Cooperation in Pre-Contact
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Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Series Editor: Debra L. Martin Ryan P. Harrod The Bioarchaeology of Social Control Assessing Conflict and Cooperation in Pre-Contact Puebloan Society Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Series editor Debra L. Martin Professor of Anthropology University of Nevada, Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada, USA More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11976 Ryan P. Harrod The Bioarchaeology of Social Control Assessing Conflict and Cooperation in Pre-Contact Puebloan Society Ryan P. Harrod Department of Anthropology University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage, AK, USA Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ISBN 978-3-319-59515-3 ISBN 978-3-319-59516-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59516-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946475 © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book would not have been possible without the support of my family. I want to say thank you to my partner Stephanie and two children Kael and Amara. Then I would like to thank my mother Anne and sister Nicole. Foreword Publishing dissertations as books may be something that is done less frequently (although there are no easily available statistics on this), but it is often a very pro- ductive way to take a great deal of statistical and analytical data and turn it into a good story. This was done very successfully by Danielle Kurin in this series with the publication of The Bioarchaeology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru (Springer, 2016) as well as Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care (Springer, 2015) by Lorna Tilly. Other well-established bioarchaeologists are enjoy- ing the long run of their book versions of their dissertations, such as Tiffany Tung for Violence, Ritual, and the Wari Empire (UPF, 2012) and Gwen Robbins Schug for Bioarchaeology and Climate Change (UPF, 2011). Turning a dissertation into a book is an arduous task because the two manuscripts are very different in audience and scope. Dissertations often focus on the methods for data collection, the data that were collected, and the analysis of those data. This is sandwiched in between an introduc- tory framework that provides background, theory, and questions being asked and a discussion/conclusion that provides insight into how to think about all of the data. As Dominic Boyer, book editor at Cornell, states so elegantly, “a book is what hap- pens later, once you’ve grown past the dissertation” [https://chroniclevitae.com/ news/529-dear-first-time-author-how-to-turn-your-dissertation-into-a-book]. In this book by Ryan Harrod, we see a young scholar who has grown intellectu- ally past his dissertation. He has workshopped various aspects of his findings at regional and national meetings in the form of posters and presentations, and he has continued to think about the broader implications (and applications) of his study. While it is a completely fleshed-out case study for the archaeological sites situated in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, it also connects well to many current themes in academia. His project ultimately addresses issues such as the effects of inequality on those who have less power to control their lives, the agency and resistance to aspects of social control that people may engage in, and the ways that captivity and enslavement often underwrites projects that benefit the elites and leaders, but not those who are powerless. vii viii Foreword This important study on the bioarchaeology of social control in ancient America has information that will be of broad interest to anyone who is thinking about the ways that structural violence works in human societies. While many bioarchaeolo- gists are investigating the role that violence plays in social organization, resource distribution, and change over time, this case study takes a different approach. It examines a moment in prehistory when there was no overt warfare or physical vio- lence enacted upon victims, and it asks the question, is the lack of warfare some- thing we can call peace? The answer is no, because coercion and forms of controlling who has the power to accrue wealth are usually still in play with any social system that is stratified. The raison d’être of the new bioarchaeology is the conscience use of multiple lines of evidence to build robust interpretive frameworks. In this case study, burials and human remains form one important set of data, but the author also draws upon archaeology, ethnohistory, and social anthropology in order to find the sweet spot where an interpretation is supported by all of the different evidentiary possibilities. In many ways, this study is revolutionary in relation to the scholarship that came before it because it traverses sex, gender, class, health, and modes of violence (and veneration) in a way that makes us wonder how scholars could have ever rested so easily with interpretations based only on the archaeological reconstruction of the sites. This volume will aid in overthrowing the older research agenda in the Pueblo Southwest through a well-chosen combination of archaeological field work, archi- val and ethnohistoric research, and laboratory analyses. His work is empirically based on the skeletal material, but he also integrates archaeological context with age, sex, and status in a way that reveals a complex picture of social relations and social control vis-à-vis various types of violence. While his work includes a careful summary on the literature available on social control in this region, he succeeds in bringing that sophisticated mindset to the empirical world in a way that few scholars in bioarchaeology are able to do. Thus, this study lays the groundwork for many future dissertations on the topic of social control in times of so-called peace. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory Debra L. Martin University of Nevada, Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV, Nevada Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Debra Martin, for steering me toward research in the US Southwest and guiding my development in the discipline of bioarchaeology. This book is based on my dissertation work at UNLV, so I would like to thank Dr. Barbara Roth, Dr. Jennifer Thompson, Dr. Pierre Liénard, and Dr. Janet Dufek who served as my committee members and helped to shape my ideas. I am very appreciative to the institutions that granted permission for me to analyze the collections, including Gisselle Garcia-Pack at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Dr. David Hunt at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and Dr. Steven LeBlanc and Olivia Herschensohn at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. I also want to acknowledge the hard work of the researchers whose prior work made this temporal and spatial comparison a possibil- ity. First, Dr. Kerriann Marden, who rearticulated the cranial and postcranial remains of the AMNH burials in Room 33 and a number of the Pueblo Bonito burials curated at the NMNH. Then Dr. Pamela Stone and Dr. Ventura Pérez, who, as a result of prior work conducted for their respective dissertation projects, provided background information on many of the burials from AMNH and contributed to my understand- ing of the Southwest. My colleagues at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the Department of Anthropology who have provided valuable feedback on the book and motivated me to finish writing it. Finally, this project was funded by a fellowship and a number of grants from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, including the Barrick Graduate Fellowship (2012–2013), the Patricia J. Sastaunik Scholarship, the Eleanor F. Edwards and Max Olswang Scholarship, the Patricia A. Rocchio Memorial Scholarship, and a series of Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) sponsorship grants. ix Contents 1 Understanding the Chaco Phenomenon................................................ 1 The Greater Southwest............................................................................... 2 A Brief Overview: Life During the Chaco Phenomenon....................... 3 Violence as an Ideology in the US Southwest....................................... 4 Human Skeletal Remains and