Anyway, one presentation, which I unfortunately didn't really take notes on, was done by a UofU Doctoral student. I'd say it was the most interesting to me, so I wanted to throw out a bit of what I remember for you all.
It dealt with a mass burial in Moab. Six individuals, all male and all between 13-25 years old. Dentition and bone condition suggest that they were all in good health when they died. Three showed similar healed cranial injuries including a segment of bone/incised trauma above the right eye and several blunt trauma episodes to parietal and occipital lobes. Etc, etc, interesting stuff about the bones, but the really intriguing bit is the way the bodies were laid out in the mass grave. Unfortunately I have sucky MS Paint and that's it for graphic edits so I can't crop and rotate this correctly, but it gives you the basic idea:
Each burial was placed face down, with layered bodies having heads placed over the thoracic trunk and down. So they're actually at an angle, which I can't do in Paint, such that the six piled up a bit and then sloped back off.
Has anyone seen anything like this? It's really a bizarre bit of activity.
She didn't say anything about grave goods. She did note that the two common skull shapes for Utah burials (one more spherical/robust typically associated with Fremont/Anasazi culture and one more elongated not consistently identified to any specific culture) were represented in the grave, a good indication that cranial morphology shouldn't be standing alone in our cultural affiliation calls.
Anyway, interesting bit. Wish I had her graphic or better technology on my lappy...but anybody got any thoughts?
6 comments:
Moab huh? Is there any idea of temporal placement? I know that Moab was kind of a no-mans land of sorts, but are these people Basketmakers or what?
If this kind of thing was found at a Hohokam site, people would be talking about witchcraft and witch disposal. I think there was maybe something like this at Sand Canyon Pueblo? It's a PIII site near Crow Canyon...
The only thing was that she said that some of the skull shapes were typical Anasazi/Fremont morphology, so I guess that would make it Anasazi, but she didn't go into grave goods or things...atleast that I remember.
We have found a witch. May we burn her?
How do you know she is a witch?
She looks like one!
Tell me. What do you do with witches?
Burn'em!!!
And what do you burn apart from witches?
More witches!!!
So you're saying we should compare the weight of the burials to ducks and see if they'd float like very small rocks? Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
I got better...
Stop! This discussion has become too silly to continue.
You Monty Python fans should get the "too silly" quote.
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