Beyond the Broken

Beyond the Broken

Jenny L. Adams

This paper explores the potential social and behavioral implications behind acts of purposeful item destruction and describes attributes distinctive to accidental, natural, and intentional breaks. Broken ground stone artifacts are an enigma in the archaeological record and are sometimes ignored as background noise better left in the field. If collected at all, budget or time constraints may require the exclusion of broken items from the analyzed sample. The purpose of this paper is to build a framework for evaluating broken ground stone items, some of which impart important information about social processes. Like manufacturing, intentional breaking is technology in action (Hoffman 1999). Both require knowledge about the effects of force and mechanics on specific materials and both are situated in a larger socio/cultural environment in which there are actors and audience intertwined in performance (Chapman 2000; Hoffman 1999; Pearson 1998). The interactions between prehistoric actors and audience can be modeled with prudent use of the ethnographic record, which is extremely rich in the U.S. Southwest. The living groups referred to here are O’odham (previously called the Pima and Papago), and Yumans (including Maricopa and Mohave), who live in southern Arizona and southern California, and Hopi, Zuni, and Santa Clara (collectively referred to as Puebloans), who live in northern Arizona and New Mexico (Fig. 14.1). The intentional breaking or destruction of things has multiple levels of meaning for those involved, and is a complex act invoking power, meaning, and social action (Chapman 2000; Hoffman 1999). Recovery context and life history are two crucial concepts for reconstructing how broken items fit into social processes at the time of their entry into the archaeological record. Examples of important contexts are architecturally related structure fill (such as roof fall, wall fall, or floor fill), floor contact, interior features, exterior features, and trash features. Site formation processes and the processes of human agents must be considered when inferring how an item’s archaeological context is relevant to its systemic context (Schiffer 1987; Schlanger 1991). Discard, loss, caching, and abandonment processes have all been identified as mechanisms by which items enter the archaeological record (Schiffer 1987:47–98); however, scavenging and natural erosion processes might move or remove items from where they were left, discarded, stored, or cached. Primary refuse (composed of both whole and broken items) includes artifacts discarded where they were used, and secondary refuse consists of artifacts that were discarded elsewhere (Schiffer 1987:58–9). De facto refuse is comprised of the usable or reusable cultural remains left in situ

214 NEW APPROACHES TO OLD STONES

Figure 14.1 Map of site locations.

BEYOND THE BROKEN 215

by the inhabitants (Schiffer 1987:89). Artifacts left on floors may have been de facto or primary refuse, or they could have been left in storage. Unfinished pieces, whole pieces awaiting future use, and broken pieces intended to serve in a secondary capacity are likely candidates for storage. Interior and exterior pits were probably storage locations for ground stone; however, exterior pits were also easy catchments for dumped secondary refuse or trapped sheet trash that washed or eroded into the depressions through natural processes. Storage is a location, a condition, and an act of ‘safekeeping’. As such, the burial of ritually used items in consecrated locations (as per Walker’s [1995:75–7] ceremonial trash) is a form of storage. The personal possessions buried with a body are ceremonial trash buried in sacred ground, whereas offerings are sacrificial deposits—items whose life histories were interrupted (Walker 1995:75–6). Mundane trash is typically recognized by the fragmentary condition of most artifacts in the deposit. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the formation processes in each of these contexts and to distinguish intentionally broken items from those that broke through use or natural processes.

Ethnographic Analogy

Breakage prohibits an item from functioning in the future as originally designed. This is apparent even without considering the social contexts of breakage. The goal of this discussion, however, is to reconnect archaeological artifacts to the socio/cultural environment in which they were made, used, broken and discarded. Three constructs grounded in ethnographic analogy are important for achieving this goal. The first deals with the releasing of life forces. The second highlights the power of smoke to transport the prayers of the living to the ancestors and to purify and intertwine with the third construct. The third construct views mortuary behavior as a ritual performance. Some of the performances, especially those involving cremation, create copious amounts of smoke and transform the dead into an ancestor. The concept behind the first construct is that human-made things are imbued by their maker with a sense of being that lives in the object until it is released. Chapman (2000:5–6) puts forth the concept that the maker of an object contributes a personal value to it, and that as an object is exchanged all owners, users, and exchangers pass along a part of themselves. Puebloan potters have explained that the breaks in painted designs are pathways left for the escape of either their spirit or the spirit within the pot (Bunzel 1972:38, 69; Chapman 1995:33–4). Some prehistoric Puebloan pots have carefully manufactured holes in their bottoms that leave the pots otherwise intact (see illustrations in Brody 1977 and Anyon and LeBlanc 1984). Santa Clara Pueblo potter, Rina Swentzell, explains that Puebloans think of human-made things as alive in the sense that along with humans, plants, and animals, the pots breathe the air of the universe. The holes allow the breath to flow back into the cosmos (Brody and Swentzell 1996:20–1). Even though this breakage technique facilitates the transference of breath/life out of the vessel, most of the pot remains as a mnemonic. The framework for the second construct is that smoke is a powerful transmitter of power, prayers, and purification. Puebloan pipe smoking usually involves men socially sharing the pipe or blowing smoke over objects or people in ritual observances (Stephen 1936:681–3). Women are rarely described as smokers (Parsons 1939:585, 869). A socially smoked pipe is sucked so that the smoke enters the body and is expelled through the mouth. Even during social smoking, the expelled smoke may impart the same ritual meanings generated by pipes and cloud blowers smoked in specific rituals. Cloud blowers (conically-shaped pipes) are used in a manner that seems upside down. The lips are placed on the large end and the small end is situated over an object or person and the smoke is blown through the pipe (Fewkes 1894:32; Parsons 1939:372; Stephen 1936:106, 603, 683). Proper smoking is meant to generate copious clouds of smoke that are associated with the


bringing of rain clouds (Stephen 1936:681). Smoke is also powerful because of its ability to cleanse an area, person, or item (Lamphere: 1983:744, 760, 762; Parsons 1939:69; Spier 1933:384), and to provide a communication vehicle from the living to ancestral spirits (Parsons 1939:371; Stephen 1936:826). The third construct contrasts the purposeful destruction of cremation with the concept of storage through burial. What is known about Native American cremation in the U.S. Southwest comes from historic and ethnographic accounts of Yuman mortuary rituals (McGuire 1992:40–50; Stewart 1983:66–67). Primary cremation burials are those in which the bones and ashes were buried at the cremation location. Remains buried in other locations are secondary cremation burials. Native American cremation practices were stopped by Christians advocating inhumation in the late nineteenth century (McGuire 1983:35). Cremation obliterates a person’s body (McGuire 1992:43–5), consumes perishable items, and can crack stone items added to the pyre. Cremation pyres are large, accommodating enough fuel to reduce a body to small bits of bone and ash. Initially, the flames of a cremation pyre burn high and hot, but eventually the pyre is reduced to smoke and coals before burning out completely. Even though both cremation and inhumation transform a person’s status from contemporary to ancestor, the oral traditions, images, and social memories that surround the burning of a relative’s body are quite different from those of inhumation rituals - compare Stewart’s (1983:66–7) description of Mohave cremation ceremony and Stephen’s (1936:826–9) description of a Hopi burial. Objects interred with the dead may have been their personal possessions or offerings of prestige, respect and love, payments of debt, or gifts requiring reciprocity from the mourners (Chesson 2001:4; Hollimon 2001:43–5; McGuire 1992:41–50; Pearson 1998:32). These items, be they pots, clothing, personal ornaments, or ground stone, reached the end of their designed use-lives for different reasons. Personal possessions reached the end of their use-lives because of their owner’s death. The use-lives of offerings are interrupted by their sacrifice. However, burial did not necessarily remove their cultural connections, especially if connections were maintained by memory-reinforcing ceremonies such as mourning rituals that mark the one-year anniversary of death (Chesson 2001:100–1; McGuire 1992:43–4; 2001:39). Acts of burying, burning, intentionally breaking or destroying items create and maintain social connections that are not there with items that were accidentally or naturally broken, tossed into the trash, or stored for future secondary use.

Mechanisms of Breakage

Not all breaks are created equal. What causes one large stone artifact to break into two fragments and another similar artifact to break into multiple fragments? How is it possible to distinguish artifacts that were broken while in systemic context from those that broke in archaeological context? Four types of breaks are recognized here: natural breaks, manufacturing breaks, intentional breaks, and mechanical breaks. Natural breaks are caused by the mechanisms of seasonal freezing and thawing, diurnal heating and cooling (Ritter 1986:110–8; Schiffer 1987:153–8), or one-time exposure to intense heat such as a house fire or forest fire. Each one can create spalls that, at first glance, appear similar to intentionally removed flakes. However, they do not have the features defined by flaked lithic technologists as distinctive to a fracture created by the force of a tool-wielding human. The features caused by the percussive strokes of hammerstones include bulb of percussion, negative bulb of percussion, lines of force, and hinge, step, or feather fractures (see for example Crabtree 1972; Cotterell and Kamminga 1990:130–50). During manufacture, any object is in peril—the slightest miscalculation in the amount of applied force can cause it to break, especially if the stone is flawed. Percussion, abrasion, and drilling each


apply force against the stone in a different manner, although of the three, abrasion probably causes the least amount of accidental destruction during manufacture. Too much downward pressure during drilling may cause the item to snap, resulting in fragments with unfinished holes. Holes drilled too close to the edge of a bead or pendant may break through the margin, leaving ornaments that are finished but cannot be strung. Percussive damage on a newly manufactured item most likely resulted from the accidental application of too much force, whereas on a well-worn tool it probably resulted from intentional destruction. Intentionally broken artifacts are often described as ‘killed’ (Haury 1985:231, 244; Martin et al. 1956:72). A killed artifact can have a hole drilled, or manufactured in it, and still be relatively whole, as noted with prehistoric Puebloan pots. An artifact also can be killed by fracturing it into pieces. If the pieces were deposited in proximity and not dispersed by the activities of human agents or by natural forces, then the item should be reconstructable (Chapman 2000:25). However, artifacts may have been purposefully broken so that their pieces could be spread among different individuals or groups as a method for maintaining or signifying social relationships (Chapman 2000:37–8). How remarkable it would be to find pieces that refit from one or more locations across the landscape! Mechanical breaks occur during use. A mano actively used in the cultural process of food preparation can break along stress fractures or because of imperfections in the stone. The force of a chopping stroke may dislodge a large flake from an axe bit rendering it useless for future chopping. Some rocks break because they are exposed to fire as the structural elements of thermal features. Examples include the slabs that line hearths, rocks that serve as trivets for supporting cooking pots in the hearths, and the rocks that line or are piled into roasting pits (also known as fire-cracked rocks). These are distinct from rocks intentionally heated to improve their performance characteristics prior to flaking (Cotterell and Kamminga 1990:128–9). The process of repeated heating and cooling experienced by roasting rocks causes them to fracture into progressively smaller pieces, which remain in close proximity unless the pit is cleaned out for further use. The attributes of thermal alteration are not always easy to recognize on individual fragments, however (see for example Duncan and Doleman 1991).

Broken But Not Forgotten

Recently, archaeologists have begun to recognize that the act of breaking something is a way of maintaining or manipulating meaning (Chapman 2000:25–7; Hoffman 1999:119). Both ceremonial trash and sacrificial deposits can be recognized through the analysis of palettes, cruciforms, pipes, and metates recovered from excavations in southern and central Arizona (Table 14.1). These items were found in varying conditions including whole, fire-cracked, accidentally broken, and intentionally broken. Some of what is known about their manufacture, use, discard, and destruction comes from the accounts of historians, ethnographers, and turn-of-the-century visitors to the U.S. Southwest (see for example Bartlett 1933; Cushing 1920; Fewkes 1894; Hough 1915; Parsons 1939; Russell 1975; Stephen 1936; Underhill 1979; Titiev 1944, 1972; Voth 1903). Pipes and metates are still used today. Archaeological projects in central and southern Arizona have produced thousands of broken artifacts. Thirty-seven items (Table 14.1) from 15 sites (Fig. 14.1) have been selected to illustrate how context and the recognition of intentionally broken items can be used to reconnect the archaeological record with the social processes that created it (Chapman 2000:23–7; Hoffman 1999:19). Even though the sample of 3 cruciforms, 8 palettes, 18 metates, and 8 pipes is small, it is heuristic. Many more examples of these items have been found in similar contexts in the U.S. Southwest; however, only these few have been analyzed in a manner that specifically records evidence of an artifact’s life history (Adams 2002a).


Thirty-two of the selected items are broken. Two were broken during manufacture and two were broken after use (Table 14.1). These four, along with three whole pipes and two whole palettes, are included as counterpoint to the intentionally broken items. The whole and broken pipes and palettes are prime examples of items in mundane or ceremonial trash, and in sacrificial deposits. Some pipes were broken during manufacture or use, and these were discarded as trash. Smoked, whole pipes were buried as ceremonial trash, and a whole, unfinished pipe was stored in a pit. The palettes were recovered from mortuary features. Except for two, they were recovered from secondary cremations. Broken cruciforms were discarded as secondary trash after they were broken. Metates were either fractured or perforated to end their use-lives, and they were found in a wider range of contexts than the other artifacts (Table 14.1). These artifact types are subsequently discussed in more detail to highlight the nature of their demise.

Table 14.1 Condition and contexts of ground stone artifacts.

Artifact Condition Context Site Time Rangecruciform tine fragment Sheet trash Las Capas 1200–800 bc

cruciform tine fragment Sheet trash Las Capas 1200–800 bc

cruciform tine fragment Sheet trash Las Capas 1200–800 bc

palettea snapped Secondary cremation Julian Wash ad 950–1000palettea snapped Secondary cremation Julian Wash ad 950–1000palette snapped Exterior pit Julian Wash undatedpalettea whole Secondary cremation Julian Wash ad 950–1000palettea snapped Secondary cremation Haught Ranch ad 800–900palettea whole Burial Haught Ranch ad 600–900paletteb snapped Secondary cremation Sunset Mesa ad 1000–1100paletteb snapped Secondary cremation Sunset Mesa ad 1000–1100pipe fragment, smoked Secondary trash Las Capas 400 bc–ad 150pipe fragment, smoked Sheet trash Las Capas 1200–800 bc

pipe fragment Secondary trash Las Capas 400 bc–ad 150pipe broke during manufacture Secondary trash Las Capas 400 bc–ad 150pipe broke during manufacture Sheet trash Las Capas 1200–800 bc

stemmed pipec whole, smoked Extramural pit Las Capas 1200–800 bc

stemmed pipec whole, smoked Extramural pit Las Capas 1200–800 bc

pipe unfinished Extramural pit Las Capas 1200–800 bc

basin metate perforated Sheet trash Los Pozos pre–1200 bc

open basin metate perforated Sheet trash AA:12:170 ad 550–850open basin metate perforated Pithouse fill AA:12:170 ad 550–850¾ basin metate perforated Pithouse fill AA:12:83 ad 550–1150metate fragment Pithouse floor AA:12:83 ad 550–1150basin metate perforated Pithouse floor Heron Hatch ad 750–850basin metate perforated Pithouse floor Haught Ranch ad 600–900basin metate perforated Disturbed McGoonie ad 900–1050open basin metate perforated Rock concentration McGoonie ad 900–1050¾ basin metate perforated Rock concentration McGoonie ad 900–1050basin metate perforated Rock concentration McGoonie ad 900–1050basin metate perforated Pithouse fill Chiseler Hill ad 900–1100basin metate perforated Pithouse floor Camp Geronimo 350–30 bc

basin metate perforated Pithouse floor Camp Geronimo ad 700–1000basin metate perforated Pithouse fill Camp Geronimo ad 700–1000trough metate fragment Surface Little Bird ad 850–950trough metate fragment Surface Valencia ad 1000–1100trough metate perforated Extramural pit Crismon Ruin ad 1150–1450

a sintered residues presentb not analyzed for residuesc in cemetery area


CruciformsCruciforms are uniquely + or X shaped stones that have been variously interpreted as functional or representational (Adams 2002a:196–8; Di Peso et al. 1974:592; Ferg 1998:560–72). Some cruciforms are more visually impressive than others are, carved out of colorful stones or clear crystals and lustrously polished (Fig. 14.2). Others are not as finely made or precisely symmetrical. There are no ethnographic descriptions of their use. Suggested uses include charms, dice games, medicine man’s tools, and atlatl weights (Di Peso 1974:592; Ferg 1998:570; Hemmings 1967:162; Johnson 1971). Their geographic distribution seems to be limited to the southern U.S. Southwest, northern Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico (Ferg 1998:560). Evidence for the intentional breaking of cruciforms comes from Las Capas, an Early Agricultural settlement along the Santa Cruz River in Tucson, Arizona (Fig. 14.1) (Table 14.1). Broken tines are all that remain of the cruciforms (Fig. 14.3) and these are damaged by impact fractures from

Figure 14.2 Line drawing of whole cruciform recovered from Los Pozos and manufactured from a clear quartz crystal.

Figure 14.3 Intentionally broken cruciform tines recovered from Las Capas.


the hammerstones used to break them (Adams 2003). After they were broken, the tines were treated the same as any other piece of mundane trash. Interestingly, broken clay figurines were also recovered from mundane trash deposits at Las Capas (Stinson 2003:254–5). The fact that these items were treated as trash and not purposefully buried in pits or left on structure floors is important. The significance or power vested in a cruciform or a figurine may have been operable only upon breakage. Alternatively, as with the Puebloan pots, cruciforms and figurines may have been broken to release their breath back into the cosmos. Either way, once broken they were no longer dangerous, powerful, or alive, and were therefore no longer in need of curation or careful treatment within a broader social context (see also Chapman 2000:25–8; and Stinson 2003 for additional references to figurine breaking and disposal).

PalettesPalettes are thin, handheld, tabular stones with decorated borders around a shallow basin (Fig. 14.4). Some served as containers and others as mortars (Adams 2002a:146–50). Mortar use is recognizable by a shallow depression worn in the basin through the working of a small, smooth handstone (Adams 2002a:146). Palettes are usually considered ritual because of their frequent association with prehistoric mortuary features (Haury 1976:288–9). Yet, rarely do descriptions of palettes suggest how they might have been used in mortuary ritual. There are no ethnographic or historic accounts of their use. They show up in the archaeological record around ad 400, become more elaborate and more frequent between ad 800 and 1000, and then seem to decline in frequency until by ad 1100, when they are rare. Palettes were intentionally broken at the settlements of Sunset Mesa (Adams 2000) and Julian Wash (Adams 2006a) in southern Arizona, and Haught Ranch in central Arizona (Adams 2006a) (Fig. 14.1) (Table 14.1). Hinge fractures are evidence of how the palettes were snapped. Some were snapped into two pieces. Others were snapped twice, once from the front of the palette and once from the back, creating three similarly sized pieces. The palettes described here were most frequently associated with secondary cremation burials. One, however, was recovered from a pit that lacked human remains even though it was in a Julian Wash cremation cemetery (Adams 2004). Two whole palettes were recovered, one from an infant inhumation at Haught Ranch and one from the secondary cremation burial of a young adult at Julian Wash (Minturn et al. 2004). It should be noted that not all of the mortuary features at these settlements had palettes. Secondary cremations were more common than inhumations at Sunset Mesa (Beck 2000) and Julian Wash (Beck, in press), whereas inhumations were more common than cremations at Haught Ranch. None of the children at Haught Ranch were cremated (Minturn et al. 2004:316), but the only remains of a child recovered from Sunset Mesa were cremated (Beck 2000:table 12.3). Five palettes have residues that are probably the remains from heating a mixture of powdered lead carbonate and vegetal juice or gum, a combination that could have caused a lively chemical interaction (Hawley 1965:282–9). When heated to about 300 degrees centigrade some residues turn powdery red, similar in appearance to ocher (Adams 2002a:147; Hawley 1975:284). In this context, palettes were containers used in a spectacular ritual performance. The performance ended through burial, or through intentional destruction and then burial of the palette. Two whole and three snapped palettes had sintered residues, one snapped palette did not have sintered residues, and two snapped palettes were not analyzed for residues. Chemical burning and intentional breaking apparently did not always co-occur. The snapped palette without residues was in the previously mentioned cemetery pit that lacked human remains. This palette may have been part of an annual mourning ritual marking the death of an individual rather than part of the transforming cremation performance. Two of the five palettes with residues were recovered from Haught Ranch (Table 14.1): one is whole and the other is snapped. The whole palette was buried with an infant in the floor of a


Figure 14.4 Line drawing of a palette intentionally snapped into three pieces and recovered from Julian Wash.


Haught Ranch pithouse and does not fit the pattern of intentionally broken palettes associated with secondary cremations. The snapped palette does fit the pattern by being buried with a secondary cremation of an adult. One explanation for the difference could be that the infant died up to two hundred years before the adult (Table 14.1), perhaps before cremation became a common mortuary practice at Haught Ranch. Another explanation may be that the two mortuary features at Haught Ranch were contemporary and completeness of the palette and of the infant body were significant. There is a consistency in the second explanation if the after-life beliefs at Haught Ranch were similar to those of historic Puebloans. Hopi buried their children in special locations (Stephen 1936:487) because the spirits of those too young to have been initiated are reborn into the next child rather than passing on to the ancestral underworld (Eggan 1950:47; Ferguson et al. 2001:12; Titiev 1944:177). Both palettes, from the burial and the cremation, had sintered residues. Therefore, it appears that even though the infant’s body was not destroyed, a spectacular mortuary performance accompanied burial of both the infant’s body and the cremated remains of the adult.

PipesThere are many styles of stone pipes. Some have stems made from wood or bone and others are complete with only a conical or cylindrical stone body. Eight broken and whole pipes were recovered from extramural contexts at Las Capas (Table 14.1) (Fig. 14.1). Pipes that broke during their manufacture (Fig. 14.5) and fragments from smoked pipes were in trash-filled, extramural

Figure 14.5 Pipes broken during manufacture recovered from Las Capas.


features. There is no evidence that the pipes were intentionally broken. One unfinished pipe was in a bell-shaped pit where it was probably stored, perhaps for eventual completion. Two complete, smoked pipes were recovered from the same pit, although buried at different levels (Fig. 14.6). The pipes apparently remained smokeable with their bone stems still attached when they were placed in the pit; each was buried at a different time (Adams 2002b). The pit was located within a cemetery area where it intruded the pit of one inhumation and was intruded by the pit of another. Given these examples of pipes, their condition, and contexts at Las Capas, it seems reasonable to conclude that the manufacture alone of ritual paraphernalia did not necessarily provoke ritualistic behavior toward the items. Broken pipes were treated as if they were mundane trash. After certain pipes were smoked, however, they were not destroyed nor were they buried as possessions of a particular person. They were deposited as ceremonial trash (Walker 1995:75–7) and treated as objects no longer needed among the living. Perhaps they were no longer needed in ritual performances or, more dramatically, perhaps the ritual in which they were used died out. The pipes were buried in sacred ground to recognize their power and remove them from further social action, and at the same time put them in a place where it might be easier to retain their social memory—as long as someone remembers.

Figure 14.6 Complete stone pipes with bone stems recovered from Las Capas.


Metates A metate is the lower stone upon which foods are ground with a hand-held mano. Similar tools are called handstones and querns, or handstones and netherstones elsewhere in the world. Historic accounts of the O’odham and Yumans illustrate women using freestanding metates outside their houses (Fontana 1983:fig. 6; Spier 1933:pl. III; Underhill 1979:67). Women who prepared foods together took turns grinding with the same manos and metates. Grinding was done daily for consumption by the household and by any visitors. Small amounts of meal may have filled an extra pot or two (Spier 1933:52), with additional grinding needed only occasionally for festivals or large gatherings (Underhill 1979:82). Puebloan women ground food on metates situated in multiple, slab-lined bins permanently affixed inside habitation rooms (Bartlett 1933:fig. 7; Ladd 1979:fig. 3; Mindeleff 1989:figs. 101, 105). The women frequently worked in groups of two or three, and often worked in rhythm to singing or flute music supplied by a male visitor (Hough 1915:62–3; Kidder 1932:67, quoting Casteneda; Stephen 1936:153–4, 882). Puebloan grinders produced massive quantities of flour, far beyond their daily household needs in preparation for ceremonial functions, such as weddings and the frequent Katsina ceremonies that occur over a period of months each year (Hough 1915:70; Simpson 1953:39; Stephen 1936:134, 589). Historic documents rarely describe how metates come to the end of their use-lives. A food-processing mortar used by a Walapai woman was destroyed because of her death (Euler and Dobyns 1983:260). A rchaeologically recovered metates may have been intentionally destroyed or killed for the same reason (Adams 2002b, Adams 2002a:43; Haury 1985:244; Schelberg 1997:1068, fig. 9.24). Destructive techniques observed on metates from archaeological contexts include breaking the metates into fragments and manufacturing holes in their bottoms (Fig. 14.7). The holes were

Figure 14.7 Basin metate ‘killed’ by a manufactured hole, recovered from Los Pozos.


clearly not worn through because the bottoms remain thick and the holes are surrounded by flakes and impact fractures. The metates specific to this analysis were recovered from sites in the sub-Mogollon rim region near Payson (Adams 2004:207–16, 2006c), the east side of the Phoenix basin (Adams in 2005), the Tonto basin (Adams 2002c), and the Tucson basin (Adams 2006b; Gregory et al. 1999) (Fig. 14.1 and Table 14.1). Three were fractured into pieces by blows from hammerstones that left impact fractures along the broken edges. Two of the three metates broken in this way were trough metates, and the third is too fragmentary to determine metate type. A hole was manufactured in another trough metate and in each of the basin metates. The holes range from 5 to 20 cm long, 4 to 8 cm thick and penetrated metate bottoms that remain from 2 to 4 cm thick. Intentionally broken metates were found on pithouse floors, in extramural pits, in trash, in the upper fill of pithouses, and on the modern surface (Table 14.1). The metates could have been destroyed because they were perceived as worn out, or of obsolete design, or they may have been destroyed to keep other people from using them. However, it is also possible that they were destroyed for the same reason given by a Native American potter for why holes were manufactured in bowl bottoms—to let the breath within return to the cosmos (Brody and Swentzell 1996:20–1). Large stones that were quarried for cooking slabs (pikistones) were considered by the Hopi to have been alive in the sense that the stones required feeding (Parsons 1939:195). It therefore seems plausible that metates were destroyed so that their spiritual essence might return to the cosmos.

Conclusions

Ethnographic analogy is the framework for the interpretations of intentionally broken ground stone items. One interpretation is that the manufacturer of a hole in a metate or a pot intended to release a spiritual essence, life form, or breath. The technique of leaving the item mostly intact allowed the piece to continue to serve as a reminder of how it functioned previous to its demise. The Puebloan bowls, which were part of the ethnographic analogy for this interpretation, were often killed before they were placed in a grave. The stage is set for inferring multiple levels of meaning associated with the killing of both pots and metates. The metates were probably household property used by women and passed down intergen-erationally. If Chapman (2000:5–6) is correct in that all owners, users, and exchangers pass along a part of themselves with each object, then by the end of a metate’s life there were multiple people vested in it. The release of any breath or life force within may have been paramount to the general well-being of a household. Once the act of spiritual release was performed, the final deposition of the metates was not important. Another interpretation derived through ethnographic analogy is that pipes and palettes were manufactured for performances. An audience composed of grieving friends and relatives probably watched the lead-based solutions sparkle and fizzle on the palettes and may have participated in prayers as the smoke from the pyre and the palette transported their relative to the world of the ancestors. Palettes were broken after their performances were finished, possibly to release a breath or life force. Unbroken palettes were perhaps buried as ceremonial trash. Whether or not palettes were made specifically for these performances is a question for future analysis. Pipes smoked in public rituals could have lifted the prayers of the smoker and the audience to the ears of the ancestors. Today observers of Hopi Katsina performances can still see such prayers as priests blow smoke on the Katsinas, sprinkle corn meal, and sing their prayers. Katsinas are ancestral beings impersonated by ritually trained initiates into the Katsina society. Stephen (1936) observed such performances, as well as ritual and social pipe smoking in the late 1800s, and there is evidence


that pipe smoking is at least thousands of years old (Table 14.1). The two whole pipes described here from Las Capas were buried in sanctified ground. Pipe fragments, both smoked and unsmoked, from the same site were in mundane trash. The deferential treatment of these two pipes may signify something more important than storage, such as the death of a specific ritual. The cruciforms recovered from Las Capas may have been broken in private rituals, although there is no ethnographic analogy for such rituals in the U.S. Southwest. The clay figurines recovered from the same settlement were inferred to have been used in healing rituals, curing rituals, or in ancestor veneration (Stinson 2003:225). The figurines were intentionally broken and deposited in mundane trash. Perhaps the cruciforms were similarly important at the household level in some type of ritual that eventually required their destruction. Clearly, broken ground stone artifacts are important for reconstructing prehistoric behavior and the socio/cultural environment of any given community. By looking at how artifacts became broken, and how they were deposited, it is possible to identify sacrificial deposits and ceremonial trash, thereby reconnecting broken artifacts to the social performances that resulted in their demise. Specific performances functioned to reinforce social memories, connecting people to their culture. Intentional breakage also may have fostered feelings of perpetuation and closure. Life is perpetuated through the act of releasing a spirit from a pot, metate, or palette, and through the mortuary performance of sending a loved one to the world of ancestors. Concurrently, the physical ‘killing’ of a tool creates a sense of finality and closure—the tool is no longer functional as designed, the performance is over, fini.

References

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Adams, J.L.( 2002a) Ground Stone Analysis: A Technological Approach. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Adams, J.L. (2002b) The Technology of Ritual. Paper presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Denver, March 20–24 in the symposium ‘New Views of Early Southwestern Farmers: Collaborative Investigations of the Las Capas Site, Southern Arizona’.

Adams, J.L. (2002c) Ground stone artifacts. In Tonto Creek Archaeological Project: Artifact and Environmental Analyses: Vol. 2. Stone Tool and Subsistence Studies, edited by J.J. Clark. Anthropological Papers No. 23. Tucson: Center for Desert Archaeology, pp. 559–642.

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