LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—New research indicates that the 33 men and women, whose processed and mutilated bones were discovered in two pit houses near Durango, Colorado, were tortured before their deaths some 1,200 years ago. Anna Osterholtz of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found evidence of that the victims’ ankles had been broken by blunt-force trauma, well as signs that the soles of the feet had been beaten. “Tool marks and fractures to the rest of the body’s elements had other explanations, including processing or perimortem trauma, but the tool marks and peeling on the foot elements would serve no such purpose, and would only have been useful in causing pain,” she explained to Western Digs. Earlier analysis of elements in the victims’ teeth by James Potter and Jason Chuipka suggests that they had grown up in the area of Sacred Ridge. Osterholtz speculates that the torture may have been used by an invading population to control the residents of Sacred Ridge before and during the massacre. The site was abandoned soon after it occurred.
