Raiding for Women in the Pre-Hispanic Northern Pueblo Southwest? A Pilot Examination

Spatial data on sex ratios through time from archaeological sites in the late pre-Hispanic northern U.S. Southwest reveal significant regional and subregional departures from the expected values. In the eleventh century AD, Chaco Canyon and its subregion contain more women (or, possibly, fewer men) than expected, as does Aztec and its subregion in the thirteenth century AD. At Aztec the female bias is coupled with a contemporaneous male bias in the Mesa Verde subregion to the northwest. Consideration of possible explanations for these discrepancies suggests that there is strong evidence for raiding for women in the thirteenth-century northern Southwest. This is also a possible explanation for the eleventh-century Chacoan discrepancies, though in this case other explanations cannot be ruled out.