Pre-Columbian Burial Rites: Mortuary Practice Among Prehistoric North Americans: Southwest Region

Volume I of the PRE-COLUMBIAN BURIAL RITES series consists of a comprehensive examination and discussion of mortuary behaviors by the prehistoric inhabitants of the Southwest Region of North America. The study of burial practice is useful to the discussion of the complexities of population traits and characteristics because on a societal scale, similarity or differentiation of patterning in the disposal of the dead has been considered one of the basic identifying "signatures" used to distinguish cultural populations. Because burial of the dead is a ritually-oriented, ideologically-grounded rite of passage, its very nature is conservative, steeped in tradition and resistant to change. It is possible and vital, therefore, to identify repetitive characteristics of burial customs. For this purpose a mortuary sample of 17,587 burials from 385 mortuary sites was utilized to address the range of variability and consistency within the four subdivisions of the Southwest Region that includes the Hohokam, Mogollon, Ancestral Puebloan, and Northern Rio Grande populations.

Barbara L. Ladwig has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Valparaiso University in 1965 and a Bachelor of Science degree in Anthropology (with academic distinction) from Southern Methodist University in 1998. She spent two field seasons at Pot Creek Pueblo near Taos, New Mexico, and twelve years traveling North America in research of more than 97,000 prehistoric burials. Barbara then spent an additional six years compiling the databases and writing the regional research volumes that comprise the series: PRE-COLUMBIAN BURIAL RITES. She has been a member of the SAA since 1998, a member of the Wisconsin Archeological Society since 1998, and a member of the Midwest Archaeological Conference since 2005. She currently resides in Fairview, Texas, with her husband of 49 years, Alan, and is fortunate to have her four children and three grandchildren in the surrounding area.