Vehemence and Community Violence

Violence has often been portrayed as an endemic feature of the Ancestral Puebloan world. Yet detailed analyzes of actual lethal injuries often contradict these sweeping generalizations about historical trends. To explore situational violence among Ancestral Puebloan groups, I reframe the atypical disposal of bodies at Arroyo Hondo as vehement acts. Physical trauma that results in an individual’s death are decisive transformative moments – a decision event that ruptures an individual’s immersed lived experience. The notion of vehemence conceptually situates violence as one kind of intensive aggressive act directed at individuals. Vehemence also circumscribes decisive moments when situational violence emerges as a moral act. Finally, I read vehemence through Puebloan notions of personhood to situate acts of violence within a Tewa universe.