SURVIVAL CANNIBALISM OR SOCIOPOLITICAL INTIMIDATION? Explaining Perimortem Mutilation in the American Southwest John Kantner University of California, Santa Barbara 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 star- vation 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 indica- tors that are used to identify cannibalism in collections of mutilated human remains. To address these concerns, this study attempts to recon- struct 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 cor- relating these analogues with the evidence from the Southwest. The pat- terns suggest that different behaviors are responsible for the Anasazi skeletal mutilation seen in different time periods. To explain these differ- ences, 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 sociopo- litical 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. Received February 27, 1998; accepted May 14, 1998. Address all correspondence to John Kantner, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Bar- bara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106. E-math kantner@sscf.ucsb.edu Copyright 1999by Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York Human Nature, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1-50. 1045-6767/99/$1.00+.10