CHAPTER 10 SALADO BURIAL PRACTICES AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION INTRODUCTION The mortuary data from the Platform Mound Study are used to evaluate three alternate models of Classic period social organization in the lower Tonto Basin. Archaeologists increasingly view SOCiopolitical complexity as a multidimensional phenomenon in which change on various dimensions need not occur in concert (Gumerman et al. 1994:8; Nelson 1995:599; McGuire 1983:100-105; Ravesloot 1988:68). The analysis presented here focuses on one key dimension: the nature of ranking in Salado society. The data for the analysis were collected from more than 20 Classic period Salado sites in Tonto Basin (Table 10.1) and provide one of the best means of investigating the nature of Salado social organization. The Platform Mound Study recovered 479 burials, of which 24 were cremations, but many of these had been disturbed by modern vandalism and prehistoric reuse of settlements. The results discussed here are based on quantitative comparisons of 290 undisturbed burials, with additional cases being included whenever possible. Skeletal remains were also collected as part of the Community Development Study (Swartz et a1. 1995) and the Roosevelt Rural Sites Studies (Turner et a1. 1994b). Those data sets are not incorporated into this study because of their small sample size and because they were analyzed using different procedures. To have incorporated the small numbers of additional cases into a single synthesis with the data collected as part of the Platform Mound Study would have required the reanalysis of the other assemblages, and provisions were not made for such cross-project analyses. The research team for the Rural Sites Study excavated a total of 11 features with human skeletal remains (they also recovered a single deciduous tooth that could represent a 12th individual), but five of these represented people who died when they were trapped inside burning rooms . The sample included three undisturbed inhumation burials and three Chris Loendorf prehistorically disturbed burials. The Community Development Study excavated 69 cremations (63 in one cemetery at Meddler Point) and three inhumations; a number of other inhumations were partially excavated and described in the field, but the remains were left in place and covered again with deposit. BASIS FOR THE ANALYSIS The three models used in the study are idealizations representing paints along a continuum of ranking, and the data are used to determine to what point Salado society fell closest. The analytical method makes use of two principal assumptions: 1. The presence of formal cemeteries for the disposal of the dead is associated with the existence of social units such as corporate groups, who maintained their collective rights (probably land- use) through ancestral ties (Saxe 1970:119; Goldstein 1981; Charles and Buikstra 1983:117; Mitchell 1992:191; Howell and Kintigh 1996). 2. Variability in the treatment of deceased individuals is related to their social standing in life (Saxe 1970; Biniord 1971; O'Shea 1984; Tainter 1978; Ravesloot 1988:15; Carr 1994). This assumption is based on the ethnographically tested relationship between social organization and bU1;al treatment and provides a way to link aspects of sodal organization to variability observed in mortuary treatment. Ethnographic data are also used to interpret patterning observed in the burial assemblage. Ethnographic sources for the Hopi and Zuni are drawn on most heavily because other Southwestern groups were more intensively influenced by the long-term effects of Spanish Catholicism (Adams 1991 :3; Fewkes 1927:306). In addition, the ethnographic literature on the Hopi and Zuni is more extensive and diverse than that for other groups. Ethnographic research concerning other Southwestern groups is used whenever possible. 193