An archaeological site in eastern Arizona dating to approximately 1320 CE, providing some of the clearest evidence of ethnic violence in the pre-Columbian Southwest. A foreign residential group — identifiable by their distinct pottery and architectural style — had been living within the large pueblo. Excavations revealed that this foreign enclave was violently expelled: the intrusive group's rooms were burned, and several individuals were left unburied. The evidence suggests the established community violently evicted the colonists after allowing them to live within the pueblo for a generation. Population of the overall site was approximately 500 people in 800 rooms.
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.
{"unburied_remains":5,"colonist_group_size":75,"host_community_size":500}
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