Mortuary Patterns at Turkey Creek Pueblo

Abstract

Osteological and mortuary data are used to explore how sex, age, life history, and social prestige, as bioarchaeologically visible axes of gender identity, informed mortuary treatment at Turkey Creek Pueblo, Arizona (n=323), the earliest aggregated pueblo in the Point of Pines area of the Mogollon region (AD 1225–1286). The mortuary program at Turkey Creek Pueblo is suggestive of a homogenous community where burial treatment is not strictly conditional on the osteological sex of the individual, but is informed by age and life history, social roles, and social prestige. Through comparative analyses and ethnohistoric sources, we show that differences in mortuary arrangements in both typical and atypical burials at Turkey Creek Pueblo are reflective of social and ideological factors beyond age and osteological sex that are specific to the individual and their complex social positions within the community. This research illustrates how gender roles in the past were complex and not rigidly defined by sex, and these findings clarify how social power/prestige were not expressly divided along binary sex dimensions. At Turkey Creek, osteological sex is not the most significant axis of identity structuring social difference.