Large Mogollon pueblo excavated by University of Arizona. Cemetery of 674 individuals shows trauma rates consistent with endemic violence. Cobb and Powell (2012) documented healed and perimortem trauma patterns indicating sustained conflict across generations. Part of a broader pattern of 14th-century violence across the Mogollon highlands as populations aggregated and competed for resources.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Elevated trauma rates across 674-individual cemetery sample
Competing groups within and around Grasshopper Pueblo
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Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.