Anasazi revisited

Remember this?

Well, it appears that snakes with sinister connotations are not unknown in Anasazi sites.

"A couple of years back, Ryan was digging out the bottom of another kiva here when she unearthed the 800- year old skeleton of a snake. It had been stretched out on the kiva floor, andits skull was conspicuously missing. Usually, a dead snake would be found coiled in rocks, its vertebrae scattered like dice, but this one was straight as a ruler, cleanly intact but for its head. just before the chamber had been intentionally buried in refuse and rubble, before its ceiling beams had been pulled out, a headless snake had ben laid across the hardpan floor".

It was not a sign of anything good. "Shortly after finding the snake, Ryan brought a group of American Indians to the site, asking their opinions...When she approached this exposed kiva, she mentioned her curious find, One woman from a western pueblo suddenly stiffened. Without explanation, she turned and walked away, keeping her distance from the entire site from then on.Ryan understood that the woman was carrying a private piece of knowledge, something that told her what it meant to find a headlees snake on the floor of a kiva."

It is an excellent piece, by the good writer Craig Childs-- Read The Whole Thing, as they say.