One spring around the year 1150, the people of what's now known as Cowboy Wash met a horrible end.
In a jumbled collection of bones, tools and pottery, archaeologists have uncovered grim evidence that attackers slaughtered, butchered and perhaps even cannibalized the long-ago inhabitants of the American Southwest.The discovery adds to the growing debate over the possibility of cannibalism among the Anasazi Indians, whose spectacular, apartment-like cliff dwellings are now a major tourist attraction.
"We feel very strongly that this is a case of cannibalism. If it's not, we don't know what else it could be that would produce this set of remains," said Brian Billman, part of a team of archaeologists that excavated the site from 1992 to 1996 in the Ute Mountains of southwestern Colorado.
Inside two of the three small dwellings they unearthed were the bones of at least seven people scattered amid the everyday pottery and tools of 12th-century Southwestern life. Cut marks on the bones suggest that the bodies were butchered about the time of death, and darkened areas on some of them suggest cooking as well.
"Certainly people were mutilated, and it seems to be the case that they were eaten," said Patricia Lambert, a Utah State University archaeologist.
Lambert, Billman and archaeologist Banks Leonard presented the results of the Cowboy Wash dig on Thursday in Nashville at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Hopi tribal archaeologist Kurt Dongoske said the evidence from Cowboy Wash and the 30-plus other Southwestern sites where dismembered remains have been found doesn't actually prove that human flesh was consumed.
The bones could be the result of attacks in which people were hacked apart but not eaten, he said. They could also be those of people suspected of witchcraft, who in many cultures are dismembered or otherwise destroyed after death. In colonial New England, for example, suspected witches were burned.
The bones may even have a nonviolent origin, Dongoske suggested. The Anasazi may have left dismembered bodies in abandoned buildings for religious reasons. That wouldn't be too far removed from the practice of displaying holy relics consisting of saints' body parts at medieval cathedrals.
In addition to the bones, there are two stone cutting tools at Cowboy Wash bearing traces of human blood. And preserved human feces were found on the hearth in the middle of one dwelling.
"It seems to me that that's a pretty universal symbol of contempt," said David Wilcox of Arizona State University.
Arizona State University archaeologist Christy Turner, who spent three decades researching cannibalism among the Anasazi, hypothesized that raiders from Mexico, where cannibalism is known to have been practiced, committed the violence at Cowboy Wash and the other sites.
But Billman believes that the violence was more local, perhaps related to a drought that hit the Southwest during the middle and late 12th century.
The pottery at the Cowboy Wash site suggests that its inhabitants may have been immigrants from about 50 miles to the south, and the locals may have resented the newcomers' presence when things got bad, he said.