Dataset Information

Symbolic bones and interethnic violence in a frontier zone, northwest Mexico, ca. 500-900 C.E.

ABSTRACT: Although extensive deposits of disarticulated, commingled human bones are common in the prehispanic Northern Frontier of Mesoamerica, detailed bioarchaeological analyses of them are not. To our knowledge, this article provides the first such analysis of bone from a full residential-ceremonial complex and evaluates multiple hypotheses about its significance, concluding that the bones actively represented interethnic violence as well as other relationships among persons living and dead. Description of these practices is important to the discussion of multiethnic societies because the frontier was a context where urbanism and complexity were emerging and groups with the potential to form multiethnic societies were interacting, possibly in the same ways that groups did before the formation of larger multiethnic city-states in the core of Mesoamerica.

SUBMITTER: Nelson BA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4522751 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Symbolic bones and interethnic violence in a frontier zone, northwest Mexico, ca. 500-900 C.E.

Nelson Ben A BA Martin Debra L DL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20150504 30

Although extensive deposits of disarticulated, commingled human bones are common in the prehispanic Northern Frontier of Mesoamerica, detailed bioarchaeological analyses of them are not. To our knowledge, this article provides the first such analysis of bone from a full residential-ceremonial complex and evaluates multiple hypotheses about its significance, concluding that the bones actively represented interethnic violence as well as other relationships among persons living and dead. Descriptio ...[more]

PMID: 25941398

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Dataset Information

Symbolic bones and interethnic violence in a frontier zone, northwest Mexico, ca. 500-900 C.E.

Publications

Symbolic bones and interethnic violence in a frontier zone, northwest Mexico, ca. 500-900 C.E.

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