Monday, October 25, 2010

Massacre at Sacred Ridge


There is a really nice write-up by Science News of some excellent work directed by Jim Potter, a colleague of mine at SWCA. The tone is a bit breathless, but the data are fascinating and compelling. His team has documented the remains of a massacre of 35 or more people that took place in the early 800s in southwestern Colorado, in which an entire village (Sacred Ridge) seems to have been wiped out in spectacular fashion.

It's worth noting, also, that just Jim recently finished supervising and editing a 16-volume report on the results the Animas-La Plata project, of which the Sacred Ridge Excavations were a part. It's a monumental effort documenting one of the great archaeological projects of recent decades. The skeletal evidence is reported in Volume XV (not available yet on the U of A press website), and the Sacred Ridge excavations in Volume XII.