Turner is in Siberia and could not be reached for comment. Hartman Lomawaima, a Hopi who is associate director of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, said the coprolite with traces of human flesh may have been deposited by a marauder from another tribe. The physical evidence of cannibalism is likely from an isolated incident, according to Emory Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi researcher at the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. I don't know of any oral history in Hopi that ever suggested any practice like that. But neither Lomawaima nor Sekaquaptewa said he would be distraught if cannibalism is one day proved among Hopi ancestors.
All agricultural societies have conflict and violent death.
Still, Downum thinks too much ink has been spilled on the cannibalism issue. Some scholars, such as Turner, believe that cannibalism migrated to the Four Corners region from Mexico, where human sacrifice is widely believed to have occurred. Cannibalism was perpetrated either by invading warlords or picked up by locals who interacted with tribes from the south and then used it as a form of terrorism. Downum said most of the grisly violence uncovered in the Flagstaff region occurred at territorial boundaries of ethnic groups, where rival tribes competed for scarce agricultural resources. Others think cannibalism was connected to witchcraft or simply the work of deviants.