Bioarchaeological Approaches to Southwestern Violence

Abstract

Studies of violence in the Southwest need to include multiple lines of evidence in order to understand the social role of that violence. Focusing solely on ethnographic or archaeological reconstructions can lead to an incomplete picture of lived experience in the past. The articles in this special issue provide contextualized bioarchaeological analyses of how violence is used within different groups in the Southwest prior to European contact. This introduction highlights the role that bioarchaeology can play within greater reconstructions of lived experience in the past.