Caddo Interregional Warfare or Local Burial Practice: Using Strontium Isotopes from Outlying Sites to Assess Origins and Settlement Patterns of a Skull and Mandible Cemetery at the Crenshaw Site

Summary

The 352 individuals from a skull and mandible cemetery at the Crenshaw site (3MI6) in southwest Arkansas have been argued to represent non-Caddo victims of warfare from other regions. Strontium isotopes taken from 80 individuals were processed as part of a NAGPRA grant and have been used to claim they supported evidence of interregional warfare between the Caddo and the Southern Plains. This paper demonstrates that sampling small animal teeth from surrounding sites can be used to test the hypothesis that the Caddo were instead bringing the dead and deer from surrounding sites for burial and feasting rituals. This simultaneously tests if the Caddo had a dispersed settlement pattern and has implications for their ritual community organization. The results suggest that the Caddo at Crenshaw were most likely expanding the use of skull and mandible burials as they included more distant sites within their ritual community between A.D. 1200 and 1400. This co-occurs with the adoption of maize as a staple, indicating how ritual practices, diet, and settlement patterns interact within the cultural system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage