Trauma and Violence: The Human Remains from Pecos Pueblo and Forked Lightning

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/12579s60d

Abstract

Pecos Pueblo, a Community situated in the Pecos River Valley, was inhabited AD 1325-1838. Forked Lightning, also situated in the Pecos River Valley, was inhabited from AD 1200-1425. Before the repatriation of the human remains of Pecos Pueblo and Forked Lightning to Jemez Pueblo, 1,127 individuals were reanalyzed for pathologies. This paper seeks to explore violence through time as indicated by the presence of trauma found on these human remains. Patterns of trauma seen on the individuals of Pecos Pueblo will be analyzed in the context of social interactions between Pecos Pueblo outside communities. I use recent research on violence in the past to interpret the Pecos data. In my analysis of the Human remains from Pecos, there is an increase of trauma after the Coalition period, during which both Pecos Pueblo and Forked Lightning were occupied. In the following period, the Classic period, trauma and violence at Pecos Pueblo remains constant until the Colonial period, the eighteenth century in particular, as seen in the church burial group, despite changes pathologies that indicate poor health.

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