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The Contextual Analysis of Animal Interments and Ritual Practice in Southwestern North America

ABSTRACT Animal burials are often encountered in excavations in southwestern North America. This paper identifies and contextually analyzes bird and mammal remains recovered from interment contexts in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. These data are presented in tabular form, followed by a contextual evaluation of patterns of interment. Three forms of interment are identified: 1) ceremonial trash, 2) dedicatory offerings, and 3) simple interment, including expedient disposal. While bird interments take the form of sacrifice followed by disposal as ceremonial trash, dogs are generally interred on the floors of pithouses or kivas as dedicatory offerings. Bird interments clustered around the period from A.D. 1050 to 1400; dog interments had substantially greater time depth. This contextual analysis demonstrates that patterning in animal interments can be recognized on a regional scale; similar analyses may be usefully applied to faunal data in other regions of the Americas in order to reconstruct the complex social and ritual relationships that humans maintained with animals prehistorically.