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.interethnic conflict | social violence | human bone taphonomy | archaeology | Mesoamerica

Refinement of the Chronology of La Quemada, Zacatecas, Mexico, Using Ceramic Seriation

“…As such interregional perspectives continue to develop theoretically and empirically (e.g., Braniff and Hers 1998;Jimenez 2018), archaeological research has also revealed a complicated picture of social dynamics among the frontier polities themselves (Foster and Gorenstein 2000;Jimenez and Darling 2000). Such interactions involved the intersite exchange of obsidian (Darling 1993(Darling , 1998Millhauser 1999) and worked shell (Jimenez 1995), violence or ancestor veneration in the form of differentially arranged displays of human remains (Cabrero García 1995;Nelson and Martin 2015;Pijoan and Mansilla 1990), and built spaces for processions, for large gatherings, and in recognition of astronomical alignments (Aveni et al 1982;Lelgemann 1992Lelgemann , 1997Medina González 2000;Nelson 2015). Although situated on the periphery of the Mesoamerican core, the northern frontier is a distinct social setting that requires diachronic investigation at both the interregional and intraregional scales to form a comprehensive understanding of regional sociopolitical dynamics.…”

Dynamics of change in multiethnic societies

“…Six others deal with ancient-state societies in the Near East (3, 4), China (9), Mesoamerica (7,5), and the Andean Region (6). Another contribution discusses multiethnic societies in settler, managerial, or missionary colonies in North America (8).…”