In January and February of 1994 archaeologists found the remains of twelve people who were discovered at the twelfth-century A.D. site near Cowboy Wash in southwestern Colorado. The unusual aspect about this site is that only five of the remains found were from burials. The other seven remains were found to have been systematically dismembered and defleshed, their bones were battered, and in some of the cases some of the bones appeared to have been burned or stewed. This left the bones in pretty much the same condition as that of animal bones that have been cooked and used for food. Some of the bones also had cut marks, fractures, and other stone-tool scars on them, and some of the bones had a light color, which suggests that they had been stewed. There were also patterns of burning that suggested that they had been exposed to an open flame, which would normally happen after cooking them over an open fire.
The archaeologists also took remains from other sites around the area that were similarly treated, and they came up with three possible explanations. One explanation was that there was hunger-induced cannibalism, another was that it was a ritual cannibalism adopted from Mesoamerica, and the last was that it was something else altogether. Patricia Lambert of Utah State University and Brian Billman and Banks Leonard, of Soil Systems, which was the contract archaeology firm that did the excavating of this site, think that cannibalism was a result of a big conflict between the Anasazi communities in the mid-1100’s. This time period goes right along with a period of drought and the collapse of the Chaco system. They also think there was a sharp increase in the evidence of cannibalism between 1130 and 1150, which was followed by the abandonment of the site, then a decrease in cannibalism in the early 1200’s as the climate again improved.
A religious leader from the Ute tribe who owned the land that they did the excavating on supervised the dig and then reburied the bones after the work was done.
http://www.archaeology.org/9709/newsbriefs/anasazi.html
Thomas Hunt