John Kantner
School for Advanced Research
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Featured researches published by John Kantner.
Human Nature | 1999
John Kantner
Over the past two decades, archaeologists and physical anthropologists investigating the prehistoric Anasazi culture have identified numerous cases of suspected cannibalism. Many scholars have suggested that starvation caused by environmental degradation induced people to eat one another, but the growing number of cases as well as their temporal and spatial distribution challenge this conclusion. At the same time, some scholars have questioned the validity of the osteoarchaeological indicators that are used to identify cannibalism in collections of mutilated human remains. To address these concerns, this study attempts to reconstruct the behaviors that produced the Anasazi skeletal trauma by first examining ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological material for analogues useful for interpreting mutilated human remains and then correlating these analogues with the evidence from the Southwest. The patterns suggest that different behaviors are responsible for the Anasazi skeletal mutilation seen in different time periods. To explain these differences, the study employs game theoretical models that examine how changing social and physical contexts altered the sociopolitical strategies that Anasazi groups would likely have employed. The results suggest that violent mutilation and perhaps cannibalism was an intentional sociopolitical strategy of intimidation used during Pueblo II (A.D. 900–1100), while environmental changes after this period promoted resource-based warfare and the incidental skeletal trauma associated with this behavior.
KIVA | 2003
John Kantner
ABSTRACT Archaeologists working inside and outside of Chaco Canyon have tended to consider all communities exhibiting Chacoan architecture as participating in some kind of regional system. This article considers exactly what it means to be a “system” and evaluates whether or not the evidence from great house communities and Chaco Canyon meet the criteria of regular interaction, interdependency, and unification. Based on assessments of the Chaco World database and the evaluations by the other contributors to this issue, this article concludes that only a small portion of the “Chaco World” closest to Chaco Canyon likely fit the profile of a systemic entity. Most great house communities, however, did not participate in a region-wide system of any kind. The concluding section considers how the shared material culture seen across the Chaco World could have emerged without the accompanying development of an integrated regional system.
American Antiquity | 2007
John Kantner
the research from being shared. It is no surprise that most of the papers reviewed here are from coastal environments, particularly toward the south, as this is where most of the publications originate. But there are equally interesting parts of California that also have seen a significant amount of fieldwork and production of technical reports, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada. Hopefully, people working in these areas will find inspiration in these five volumes, and will use the best contributions as models for their own future research and publication.
Journal of Archaeological Research | 2008
John Kantner
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology | 1996
John Kantner
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology | 2012
John Kantner; Kevin J. Vaughn
University of Arizona Press | 2000
John Kantner; Nancy M. Mahoney
KIVA | 2003
John Kantner
Archive | 2005
John Kantner
Journal of Archaeological Science | 2012
Andrew I. Duff; Jeremy M. Moss; Thomas C. Windes; John Kantner; M. Steven Shackley