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Featured researches published by John Kantner.


Human Nature | 1999

Survival cannibalism or sociopolitical intimidation? : Explaining perimortem mutilation in the American Southwest.

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

Rethinking Chaco as a System

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

Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin. Frances Joan Mathien 2005. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Publications in Archaeology 18H, Chaco Canyon Series. Santa Fe, NM. xx + 440 pp. (paper), no ISBN.

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

The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

John Kantner


Journal of Anthropological Archaeology | 1996

Political Competition among the Chaco Anasazi of the American Southwest

John Kantner


Journal of Anthropological Archaeology | 2012

Pilgrimage as costly signal: Religiously motivated cooperation in Chaco and Nasca

John Kantner; Kevin J. Vaughn


University of Arizona Press | 2000

Great House Communities across the Chacoan Landscape

John Kantner; Nancy M. Mahoney


KIVA | 2003

The Chaco World

John Kantner


Archive | 2005

Ancient Puebloan Southwest

John Kantner


Journal of Archaeological Science | 2012

Patterning in procurement of obsidian in Chaco Canyon and in Chaco-era communities in New Mexico as revealed by X-ray fluorescence

Andrew I. Duff; Jeremy M. Moss; Thomas C. Windes; John Kantner; M. Steven Shackley

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Andrew I. Duff

Washington State University

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