Interpreting a Multiple Burial in an Early Ancestral Pueblo Village

Abstract

This chapter describes a multiple burial on a house floor in an early Ancestral Pueblo Village in Southwestern Colorado. A survey of contemporary burials in Pueblo I (AD 700–900) villages reveals that house burials from this period are not common, but neither are they unique or uniform. Tracking thirty years of interpretation of this burial points to the importance of fine-grained contextual taphonomy, and suggests that we expand the scope of what is considered to be normative burial and body position. The changing archaeological interpretation of this Mesa Verde Region burial highlights the place of mortuary treatment in the evolving narrative of the political and social history of large early villages.