Ancient Burials Suggestive of Blood Feuds

fuckyeahforensics:

Bodies
buried by family members were arranged in a flexed position on their
side (left), while in atypical burials, bodies were left in more awkward
positions (right). Photo: Caitlin McPherson  

 
   

There
is significant variation in how different cultures over time have dealt
with the dead. Yet, at a very basic level, funerals in the Sonoran
Desert thousands of years ago were similar to what they are today.
Bodies of the deceased were buried respectfully, while families and
mourners followed certain customs to honor lives lost.

At least, most of the time.

In some cases, however, the dead received far less reverential
treatment. Instead, bodies were tossed haphazardly, headfirst, into
their eternal resting place, sometimes sustaining post-mortem injuries
on top of an often already violent death.

These atypical burials are of interest to University of Arizona
bioarchaeologist James Watson, whose study of ancient graves is
providing new insight into the social and biological factors that might
have motivated violent killings and statement-making burials in the
Southwest’s Early Agricultural Period, and how some of the same factors
may still be relevant today.

Watson’s new research, which analyzed a series of atypical burial
sites in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico between
2100 B.C. and A.D. 50, is published in the journal Current Anthropology. It was co-authored by UA anthropology doctoral student Danielle O. Phelps.

The burials Watson analyzed showed evidence of a violent end;
skeletal remains often included broken bones or projectile points
indicating a shooting death. Yet the position of the bodies in their
graves was the most telling. Awkwardly splayed or deposited in the
ground headfirst, they clearly were not given customary burial
treatment, in which they would have been arranged in a flexed position
on their sides. The burials also lacked other standard funerary features
of the time, which would have been present had the bodies been interred
by family members.

“These people were buried very differently than the rest of the
community, and we’re trying to understand why that is,” said Watson, UA
associate professor of anthropology and associate director and associate
curator at the Arizona State Museum. “We’re arguing that the way they
were tossed into these pits is a form of continued desecration of the
body. It’s moving from violence on the living individual, through to the
process of death, to violence on the corpse.”

So-called atypical burials often are associated with victims of “bad
deaths” – deaths described as unnatural, unplanned or “evil” in nature,
Watson said. A common theory in the geographical area where Watson
works is that the bodies belong to those accused of witchcraft. Yet,
given that the corpses were not dismembered in the way suspected
witches’ historically were, Watson offers an alternative explanation.

In his paper, he argues that these bodies may have been the victims
of blood feuds, or family feuds, during a time when the population was
experiencing some serious growing pains. He further suggests that the
violence of these ongoing blood feuds may have become enculturated, or
ingrained, in certain communities.

“This was right when agriculture came into the area, and these were
the earliest villages, so we think that some of this violence comes from
growing pains, as villages are established and people are claiming
territory and farming the desert river valleys,” Watson said. “Social
tensions develop between communities, or even within communities, and
end up boiling over into violence.”

At the root of that violence may be a desire to win prestige, which
in turn has important biological implications, even though the
perpetrator of violence may not be consciously thinking about those
implications, Watson said.

“Prestige has a potential to confer biological benefits, in the sense
that you can gain access to power and wealth, including wives, and have
more offspring, so there is a level of biological fitness there,” he
said.

But why the brutal handling of bodies after death?

Watson uses evolutionary biology’s “costly signaling theory” to explain what might be behind the ruthless post-mortem treatment.

Costly signaling theory is the idea that all animals exhibit certain
behaviors and physical traits that are simultaneously advantageous and
risky. For example, male birds often have colorful plumage to attract
females, which is biologically beneficial, as it will result in more
offspring. At the same time, the bright feathers could be costly, as
they also make the birds more visible to predators.

Watson suggests that violent killings followed by disrespectful
burials similarly send a strong signal – one asserting power and
dominance. This signal has the potential benefit of attracting prestige,
and the wives and children that come with it, but it also comes with
significant risk of retaliation by the victim’s family.

“By creating these atypical burials – where they’re basically
desecrating the bodies of the people killed – they’re signaling their
prowess to gain status, but it’s at a very significant potential cost,
and that is either their life or lives in their community or family,”
Watson said.

While Watson’s work focuses on violence that occurred 2,000 to 4,000
years in the past, he suggests costly signaling theory might also be
applied in the context of modern-day violence.

“With some of the issues that we’re seeing today – like increased
violence and murders in a lot of cities, police shootings, retaliation
upon police – a lot of kids are growing up in a culture of violence in
certain communities, and they’re learning different values on how to
interact with their environment because of the disadvantages that they
have,” Watson said. “They gain status because they’re good at being
violent; that’s how you gain respect, then along with that comes
advantages – wealth, women and offspring, potentially. There is a
biological imperative to signal that they are worthy of the status
they’re trying to earn.”

Ancient Burials Suggestive of Blood Feuds