Ghostly Gunslingers - Crandall & Harrod

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Ghostly Gunslingers the Postmortem Lives of the Kiel Brothers NevadasFirst Frontiersmen

John J Crandall and Ryan P Harrod

Cambridge Archaeological Journal Volume 24 Issue 03 October 2014 pp 487 - 497DOI 101017S0959774314000602 Published online 03 November 2014

Link to this article httpjournalscambridgeorgabstract_S0959774314000602

How to cite this articleJohn J Crandall and Ryan P Harrod (2014) Ghostly Gunslingers the Postmortem Lives of the Kiel Brothers Nevadas FirstFrontiersmen Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24 pp 487-497 doi101017S0959774314000602

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Ghostly Gunslingers the Postmortem Lives of the KielBrothers Nevadarsquos First Frontiersmen

John J Crandall amp Ryan P Harrod

In October 1900 Edwin and William Kiel were killed outside of Nevadarsquos oldest standingstructure in North Las Vegas Since their death the Kiel brothers have been analysed bybioarchaeologists and forensic experts Their ranch now a historic site remains the propertyof the city of North Las Vegas and is a contested space which has seen little developmentIn this article we discuss the post-mortem social lives of the brothers within the context ofdebates about the ranch and the brotherrsquos bones which remain separated How the brothershave taken on various symbolic forms after death and how their bones have not yet beenreturned to the site are examined We document the ways the brothers have been usedrhetorically as tools by the living as they have debated the future of the ranch We argue thatthe brotherrsquos bones even in their absence are effective tools in ongoing political debatesThis article provides an example of how absent bodies or bodies out of place can serve assecondary agents Additionally the study provides bioarchaeologists with a narrative ofhow the dead are more than tools but may unexpectedly alter human behaviour

Death death rituals and the bones of the long deadare perennial topics in anthropology particularly ar-chaeology In discussing death archaeologists are in-creasingly likely to think of it not only as a biologi-cal transition but also as a social transformation Asarticles in this special section attest death and theceasing of the biological life of the human body isnot the end of social engagement (Robb 2013) Talk-ing about death anthropologically provides a windowthrough which to consider an array of topics of inter-est to anthropology Death rituals are political sitesof contestation (Geertz 1957) opportunities for doingmemory work and maintaining community identity(Geller 2012) and messy engagements between liv-ing actors objects and liminal things (often corpses)which straddle the realm between being both socialactors and objects

By investigating the post-mortem histories ofbodies it is possible to understand the work that bod-ies do as they are interacted with given meaning usedas metaphors and treated as semiotic vehicles andtools through which the living achieve their ends andby which the living are also constrained (Novak 2014

Tarlow 2008 Verdery 1999) Here this approach isextended to investigate the ways that two nineteenth-century frontiersmen and their bodies remain activein North Las Vegasrsquo social life In both their presenceand absence the bodies and supposed ghosts of theKiel Brothers of Nevadarsquos historic Kiel Ranch remaineffective social agents Their post-mortem biographiesprovide an opportunity to extend ongoing interests inthe lsquosocial livesrsquo of spirits and objects across anthropol-ogy into a bioarchaeological context Examining boththe presence and absence of the Kiel Brotherrsquos bones aswell as their identities as modern ghosts provides anopportunity for bioarchaeology to consider how theabsence of bodies or bodies out of their proper placemay be informative about past politics and social in-teraction in historic America and beyond

Bones bodies and spirits tracing post-mortemagency

By exploring the post-mortem histories of two long-dead frontiersmen Edwin and William Kiel whounexpectedly and violently died in October 1900 and

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 243 487ndash497 Ccopy 2014 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researchdoi101017S0959774314000602 Received 8 Jul 2013 Accepted 6 Oct 2013 Revised 4 Apr 2014

are now seen as ghosts by Vegas locals we use a his-torical case study to understand the social roles ofghosts and bodies out of place in impacting local pol-itics and processes of social memory The brotherrsquosbodies and their lack of formal burial have frequentlybeen invoked in city-planning debates in North LasVegas since their death in 1900 Their post-mortem bi-ographies can be read as cultural debates about notonly their lives but the truth of the frontier and itsnature Such a reading highlights the ways dead bod-ies and the ghosts of historic figures formulate a con-tested ground on which community politics and socialmemory are often played out (Blanes amp Espırito Santo2014 del Pilar Blanco amp Peeren 2013 Verdery 1999Weinstock 2004)

The agency of dead bodies is a tricky thing topin down Bones being both the remains of past peo-ples and also things that can be manipulated are am-biguous substances (Fontein amp Harries 2013 Geary1986 Hallam amp Hockey 2001 Krmpotich et al 2010)In our view most bodies have two kinds of post-mortem agency effective agency and emotive mate-riality Drawing on Gell (1998) Harper (2010) Latour(1999) and Verdery (1999) we will argue that the deadbody can be both a tool of other social agents butalso structures human responses on its own throughthe ways it limits human responses as a set of ob-jects (generally bones) that retort to and provoke hu-man engagement These two forms of action oftenperformed by and with dead bodies are intertwinedsuch that the emotive materiality of bones is some-times harnessed by others seeking to mobilize the ef-fective power of the dead (Mattheeuws 2008 Verdery1999)

The dead body is not a uniform thing AsHallam et al (1999 66) argue bodies are not simplyobjects but rather better understood as lsquoan outcomeof social relations through which the categorizationof death is negotiatedrsquo This negotiation is manly theproduct of living actors Gell (1998) shows that agencyis derived from the living and requires intent (see alsoOrtner 2006) Harper (2010) proposes that dead bodiesmight also be social agents in that they serve as toolswhich extend the reach of the agency of the livingInvestigating humanndashcorpse interactions in funeralhomes in the USA and Europe Harper shows thatGellrsquos effective agency operates through dead bodiesand can be anthropologically documented So too canbioarchaeologists and mortuary archaeologists inves-tigate the symbolic political and cultural efficacy ofdead bodies and bone (eg Crandall and Martin thisissue Gillespie 2001 Novak 2014)

Bodies do not only extend the agency of thosewho speak for them or manipulate them to capitalize

on their material realness (Gell 1998 Harper 2010)As Tung (this special section) notes the consequencesof using dead bodies can yield unexpected surprisesBones thus seem to have their own effects on socialprocesses even when only extending the agency ofother living subjects Bodies mdash in their lsquothingnessrsquoconstrain us limit us and demand us to re-think ques-tion or re-examine historical narratives either throughtheir evidentiary presence or through their notableabsence (Crossland 2009) As non-human agents (In-gold 2007 Latour 1999 Robb 2013) bones operate asparts of people objects and symbols and extend theagency not only of living actors but also of other deadpeople or social systems Following Krmpotich andcolleagues (2010 372ndash3) this perspective sees it aslsquodifficult if not counter-productive to separate outthe agency accrued from the material properties ofhuman bone and that accrued from bones as parts ofhuman beingsrsquo

We follow Ingold (2007) and Fontein and Har-ries (2013) in focusing on the effects of post-mortemagency and how dead bodies appear disappear frag-ment are reconstructed and destroyed again in largerarenas This focus on the transformation and visibil-ity of bodies brings us back to larger anthropologicalquestions through tracking the manipulation of bod-ies which is something bioarchaeologists can often do(Geller 2012) We also focus our attention on momentswhen the bodies of the Kiel brothers are absent or outof places deemed proper for the notable dead In thesemoments we note the emerge of ghost stories aboutthe brothers and use these moments to think throughhow bioarchaeologists might also make better senseof the social meaning of bodies lsquoout of placersquo in othercontexts As Weinstock notes about ghosts through-out historic America ghosts are powerful social con-structs that signal the contestation of various historicalnarratives Ghosts are useful because they call atten-tion to vagaries contested histories and become toolsin negotiating cultural transition (Weinstock 2004 6)We move now to investigate the ways skeletons be-come ghosts and the ways the dead remain sociallyeffective through a historical biography of the broth-ers and their bones

Life and death on the Kiel Ranch 1879ndash1900

In 1879 a man named Octavius Gass one of south-ern Nevadarsquos earliest frontiersmen made two deci-sions that would unintentionally impact the lives ofthe Kiel Brothers forever (Moehring amp Green 2005)First under pressure by his unhappy family whowanted to leave the area he asked Conrad Kiel totake over an experimental Paiute farm he had near

Ghostly Gunslingers

Figure 1 1876 painting of a southern view of the Las Vegas ranch owned by Octavius Decatur Gass done by FredericDellenbaugh The painting reflecting the rural nature of early Las Vegas is now owned by the Nevada State Museum andHistorical Society Las Vegas NV (Courtesy of the UNLV Library Special Collections)

Figure 2 A photograph of Archibald Stewart in hisyouth A pioneer businessman born in Ireland(1834ndash1884) he would move from Pioche the LincolnCounty Seat north of Las Vegas when Octavius Gassdefaulted on his mortgage in 1881 (Courtesy of the ClarkCounty Public Library Nevada)

the Old Mormon fort (Fig 1) Later he mortgagedand subsequently lost his own property to business-man Archibald Stewart in Pioche a mining town northof Las Vegas (Fig 2) By the late 1800s both familiesopened ranch businesses in what would become theheart of historic Las Vegas

With both Stewart and Kiel ranches open forbusiness competition ensued (Moehring amp Green2005) The ranch families would engage in severalconflicts over the next few years When Conrad ac-cused Archibald of swindling his friend Gass out ofland More significant however was the shooting ofArchibald Stewart by Schuyler Henry on 13 June 1884Prior to working for the Kiel family Henry was an em-ployee of the Stewart family Archibald was shot be-cause he rode out with his gun to confront his formeremployee about the gossip that he had heard was be-ing spread This conflict caused tension between bothfamilies that motivated the brothersrsquo murder 16 yearslater (Crandall et al 2014)

Archibaldrsquos wife Helen Stewart (Fig 3) foreverblamed the Kiel family for her husbandrsquos death Thiswas likely because she had received a rather terse let-ter from Conrad informing her of husbandrsquos death andrequesting she collect the body It was Helenrsquos opinionher neighbours and the gunslingers they associatedwith had ambushed Archibald (Townley 1973)

The death of the Kiel Brothers 1900

On morning of 11 October 1900 the two brothersWilliam and Edwin (Fig 4) were found dead onthe family ranch both victims of gun-related vio-lence The story that was constructed to explain whyand how the brothers died that day fits very wellwith narratives of the lsquoWild Westrsquo The coroner thatexamined the body concluded that the two men hadfought and Edwin had killed his brother and then

Figure 3 A photograph of Helen Stewart lsquoFirst Lady ofLas Vegasrsquo shortly after the death of her husband Helenwas responsible for many of the social organizations thatsteered the growth of Las Vegas (Courtesy of the NevadaState Museum and Historical Society Las Vegas)

Figure 4 Edwin Kiel and other Paiute ranch workers infront of the adobe house where the brotherrsquos bodies werefound in October 1900 (Courtesy UNLV Library SpecialCollections)

committed suicide (Martin 1988) The basis for thisconclusion was that the brothers had fought beforedue to personality differences and associated withunsavoury frontiersmen as historian Carrie MillerTownley (1973 230ndash31) relates noting that the Kielranch attracted a lsquorough crowdrsquo Honour was impor-tant to frontier families (Courtwright 1998) so it ispossible that the brothers fought that morning andtensions escalated

A problem with this story is that the brotherswere not simply found dead by strangers they werediscovered by Frank and Will Stewart (the new suitorand son of Helen Stewart) The Stewarts reported thatthe doors were open so they investigated Edwin wasfound lying on the kitchen floor with a pistol nearhis right hand They then proceeded to search forthe other Kiel brother William was found some thirtyfeet away from the house in a ditch and partly sub-merged in water accompanied by a double-barrelledshotgun at his feet (Townley 1974 13) The coronerrsquosjury ruled that it seemed obvious that Edwin killed hisbrother William with a shotgun and ended his ownlife with his own Colt 45 As a consequence of thisaction Edwin was buried facing east so that he couldnot be resurrected on judgment day (Brooks amp Brooks1984)

William and Edwinrsquos deaths resulted in the for-mal close of the Kiel tenure in Las Vegas Conradrsquoswife passed away in 1899 and this left no one investedin the brotherrsquos estate consisting of about 250 acresof farmland and a general store (Townley 1974 11)The remaining Kiel heirs sold the ranch to the UtahNevada and California Railroad Company in 1901 Noother family came to live on the ranch near the for-saken bodies of the purported murderer Edwin andhis brother

This one day on the Kiel Ranch teaches us muchabout the history of early Nevada and by extension thenature of frontier life Violence cowboys and shoot-outs litter the story However given the less than am-icable relationship between the Stewarts and Kiels itis possible that this story is not as cut and dryied as itwas suggested to be in 1901 Women Paiute labour-ers and other people of colour are near absent exceptin possibly motivating a revenge killing in honour oftheir husbands as some have surmised Helen Stewartdid (Las Vegas Sun 2002 Martin 1988) Order honourand struggle are decided on the end of a barrel

The story reported in 1901 provides a Wild Westpicture of ranch life echoes throughout movies novelsand comics starting in the 1800s (Slotkin 1998) Crist(2006) in reviewing ballistic trauma in historic Amer-ica assumes this trope in his work Bodies working asevidentiary truths (Crossland 2009) solidify this storyThey do not speak on their own but lend their ma-teriality to legitimise a history that we now know isone-dimensional and fails to capture the full reality oflife on the frontier In these narratives skeletal injuriesand the context in which they occur are not criticallyevaluated but lumped for meta-analyses that supportthe authenticity of American mythology It should benoted at this point that this is the narrative of theKiels which forensics history and archaeology had

Ghostly Gunslingers

largely supported until the reanalysis that preemptedthis article

Ending the story of the Kiel brothers here wouldbe too simple though this is often where bioarchae-ological reconstructions do end (Geller 2012) Such astory without more information fails to consider theafterlives of the brothers the fate of the ranch that hasnow become a historical site in Nevada (Martin 1988)or the ways that these events have historical conse-quence

The afterlives of the Kiel Brothers 1901ndash2006

In 1975 Edwin Kiel would be unexpectedly lsquoresur-rectedrsquo assumedly to the discontent of those whoburied him The Kiel Ranch property including thesmall family cemetery containing Mrs Latimer an89-year-old school teacher Conrad Kiel an infantand the Kiel brothers was being transferred to thecity of North Las Vegas as part of a celebration ofthe United States Bicentennial (Martin 1988) DrsSheilagh and Richard Brooks with family permis-sion and under contract with the city were taskedwith a forensic evaluation of the remains recov-ered This analysis was a part of the cultural re-source management of the site as it was purchasedand moved into the cityrsquos hands Their analysis de-termined that the brothers had indeed not killedone another in a simple murder-suicide (Brooks ampBrooks 1984)

Interest in the Kiel remains since this analysishas flourished and provoked the authors along withtwo colleagues to re-analyse the Kiel Brother remainsin 2011 using techniques developed since the 1980sin both bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology(Crandall et al 2014)

Our trauma interpretations identified evidenceof self-defense and a new injury in the spine of WilliamKiel which further suggest that the brothers werelikely ambushed in October 1900 William Kielrsquos leftradius and ulna exhibit evidence of gunshot traumaconsistent with attempting to block a shot to the faceat close range with onersquos arm (Fig 5) An additionalnewly discovered injury to the sixth thoracic vertebrafurther supports that William was empty-handed andlikely surprised when he was killed A single pellet oflead shot is embedded in Williamrsquos spine Interpreta-tions of the injury and comparisons to other historicambush victim remains suggest that it was fired froma long distance and did not result from ricochet (Cran-dall et al 2014) In total four gunshot events occurringat different ranges suggest the Kiel brothers were vi-olently killed as the assailants closed in

Both our reanalysis and the 1976 analysis by theBrooks suggest that no simple shoot-out at high noonoccurred on 11 October 11 1900 on the Kiel Ranch Andyet stories of the ranch do not always highlight thetragedy that befell the brothers that day preferringto highlight the violence as part of the menrsquos lsquowildrsquolifestyle The latter narratives are appealing becausethey reinforce the frontier allure of the ranch of Vegasand of the West broadly For example in 1999 the LasVegas Sun reported

Legend has it that the ghosts of Archibald Stewartand Edwin and William Kiel still haunt the ranchgrounds An Aug 18 1992 fire destroyed the his-toric Park Mansion on the Kiel Ranch at 200 E CareyRoad Today the city of North Las Vegas and preser-vationists are trying to restore the Kiel Ranch (LasVegas Sun 1999)

In linking the brothers to preservation efforts weare pointed towards the ways the brothers are trans-formed by the living to fit their purpose First thebrothers were lsquocowboysrsquo who through their unnatu-ral death became ghosts They were transformed in1975 when they became forensic evidence and scien-tific data for bioarchaeologists to use to tell a newstory about homicide on the frontier However theywere once again transformed when in the 1990s af-ter the City of North Las Vegas had owned the ranchfor some 15 years and done little to improve or de-velop the property the brothers became ghosts onceagain who died a tragic death alongside the other vio-lently killed man who marks early Vegas history Thisincludes their economic competitor and neighbourArchibald Stewart As ghosts the brothers live on inpolitical debates and city folklore They appear regu-larly in the media since their death (see Martin 1988for history of news coverage until 1976) But most in-terestingly they live on in unresolved debates aboutthe Kiel Ranchrsquos fate since it became city propertyWhy and how do the Kiel brothers continue to lsquohauntrsquothe ranch (see Table 1)

Hauntings and bodies out of place the spectralityof Kiel Ranch

After their unearthing in the 1970s the Kiel brotherremains were given to Sheilagh Brooks for lsquoforensicstudyrsquo to put closure to determining the circumstancesof the Kiel Brothersrsquo deaths Since the late 1990sthe Kiel Ranch has remained fenced off from publicaccess Used by squatters and visited by local his-tory buffs and ghost hunters the site has receivedlittle attention except for a plan in 2012 for renova-tion and the construction of a plaque noting the sitersquossignificance that more fairly situates the violence of

Table 1 A benchmark timeline of many of the changes to the Kiel Property since its start in 1884 Notice the shift from developing and preserving thesite to selling it off or simply maintaining the site after 1977 (Compiled from Phyllis T Martin Historic American Buildings Survey Kiel RanchNorth Las Vegas Nevada HABS No NV-19 (Las Vegas 1988) Corinne Escobar lsquoThe status of Kiel Ranchrsquo Preservation Association of Clark CountyNewsletter October 2005)

Historical timeline of the Kiel Ranch Property (1884ndash)

1884 ndash Conrad Kiel files original land patent

1901 ndash Sold by Kiel heirs to Railroad after Kiel lsquomurder-suicidersquo

1911 ndash John Park purchases ranch and builds lsquoWhite Housersquo

1924 ndash Park sells to industrialist Edward Taylor

1926 ndash Ranch is rented out by Taylor to various tenants

1939 ndash Edwin Losee leases for Boulderado Dude Ranch

1953 ndash James Losee purchases to carry on Dude Ranch legacy

1961 ndash Losee sells land to developers

1974 ndash Land acquired by North Las Vegas Bicentennial Committee from the Regal Development Company

1975 ndash Listed in the National Register of Historic Places Family Cemetery excavated by Sheilagh and Richard Brooks 1900lsquomurder-suicidersquo is debunked

1976 ndash Donated to City of Las Vegas by Committee

1978 ndash City appoints a subcommittee with job of restoring ranch

1988 ndash 22 acres sold to Vegas Foods Kiel Ranch Industrial Park built

1990 ndash Sale of land completed to fund preservation of other 5 acres as park 1992 ndash Park Mansion (lsquoWhite Housersquo) destroyed inmysterious fire

1996 ndash Park vision 5B was approved

1997 ndash Two acres donated to remaining 5 acre ranch property by Earnest and Betty Becker Friends of Kiel Ranch formed

1998 ndash Adobe house temporarily stabilized as a result of $67000 SHPO grant

2000 ndash Phase 2 of adobe restoration rejected then overridden

2003 ndash Council proposes to relocate site and encourages local entities to take buildings off of site

2006 ndash City proposes to pass off park responsibility to the state Citizens voice discontent to city council City agrees to participate inrestoration but again does not want to manage site Adobe structure noted as poorly preserved

2010 ndash Kiel Ranch Historic Park Plan Released with options for future site construction

2011 ndash Adobe structure finally restored

2012 ndash Plan to turn the ranch into a park approved and initial design services funded

Figure 5 Forearm bones of William Kiel The proximal left radius and ulna as well as the distal left radius exhibitinjuries consistent with projectile trauma sustained by using the arms to shield against shotgun blast to the face atmoderate range

Ghostly Gunslingers

the 1890s within a larger trajectory of Vegasrsquo develop-ment (see Table 2) The political landscape of the Cityof North Las Vegas is not the focus of this article Thehistory of the Kiel Ranch and its management sinceit was acquired by the city (Table 1) clearly illustratesthat the city has wavered in its treatment towards thespace What is most important to our discussion of theranchrsquos haunting is the ways in which it has becomefrozen in time while the brothers have continued tobe discussed in political debates

Never renovated yet always almost on its waytowards a parkhistorical attraction the park remainsin a kind of limbo akin to Edwinrsquos intended fateon Judgment Day Its only inhabitants are the sup-posed ghosts of cowboys acknowledged by politicalgroups as they struggle over the site The City seek-ing to manage the land or give it to some more in-terestedwealthy party such as the state has issued aplan in which one aspect of the renovated site wouldbe a historic monument (Coe and Van Loo Consul-tants Inc 2010) The monument would emphasize theviolence of the Kiel tenure at the property Meanwhilepreservation advocates from the Preservation Associ-ation of Clark County have also invoked the brotherrsquosin asking for more to be done with the site

Writing in October 2005 in an appeal for city res-idents to protect the ranch and urge for its develop-ment as a historical park Escobar emphasizes

Perhaps the notoriety of murder and mystery is whatkept the Kiel name remembered Archibald Stew-art was murdered there in 1884 maybe nearby theadobe house where he was known to gamble withthe Kiels Even after a century of speculation no oneknows for sure why or who pulled the trigger like-wise with the brothers Edwin and William Kiel In1900 they were found shot to death and for decadesthe crime was purported to be a murder-suicide Butby 2005 neither the lure of folk talks nor true historyis going to keep the Kiel Ranch from disintegrating

entirely Only the City Council has the power to dothat (Escobar 2005 1)

Despite Escobarrsquos claim though the spectre ofthe Kiel brothers their death and the tropes of theWild West keep the ranch fenced off mdash neither disin-tegrating nor seemingly developing In this way theKiel Brothers have generated the affective force per-haps because of their violent deaths to transform theranch property into a timeless mythic place wherethe dead shape the behaviour of the living The cul-tural production of the brothers as ghosts has halteddevelopment by parties who use the dead as justi-fications for their own politicking For preservationadvocates the spectre of the brothers signal the re-ality that the bodies site and history have not beenproperly brought together It is the absence of the bod-ies which are not housed at the site or held by the citythat has been meaningfully used to strengthen preser-vation arguments Cultural geographers know such acontested landscape where myth history politics ur-ban development and the spectres of the famous deadcollide as a lsquodeathscapersquo (Maddrell amp Sidaway 2010Young amp Light 2013)

Some could argue that the deathscape thatcurrently encompasses the Kiel Ranch has little to dowith the shattered bullet-scarred remains of the KielBrothers but rather only their symbolic presence asinvoked by living actors And yet further readinginto the political conversation suggests otherwiseIndeed it is not the presence of the bones thatgenerates the deathscape but instead their currentabsence and future reburial How would they behandled Where would they go These questionsformulate the subtext of many of the few city councilmeetings that have engaged the public around thefate of the ranch and ultimately the development ofNorth Las Vegas In particular many people voiceconcern or confusion about the location of the bodiesin a special meeting held to discuss the ranch site

Table 2 The text found on the memorial plaque hanging on the fence surrounding the Kiel property

Kiel Ranch Plaque ndash North Las Vegas

Established by Conrad Kiel in 1875 this was one of only two major ranches in Las Vegas valley throughout the 19th Century The KielTenure was marked by violence neighboring rancher Archibald Stewart was killed in a gunfight here in 1884 Edwin and William Kielwere found murdered on the ranch in October 1900

The San Pedro Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad purchased the ranch in 1903 and later sold it to Las Vegas banker John S Park whobuilt the elegant white mansion

Subsequent owners included Edwin Taylor (1924ndash39) whose cowboy ranch hands competed in national rodeos and Edwin Losee(1939ndash58) who developed the Boulderado Dude Ranch here a popular residence for divorce seekers

In the late 1950rsquos business declined and the ranch was sold In 1976 26 acres of the original ranch were purchased jointly by the City ofNorth Las Vegas and its bicentennial committee as a historic project

State Historical Marker No 274

Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology

which took place on 19 July 2006 (notes availableat httpswwwcityofnorthlasvegascomMeetingsAndAgendasMeetingsAndAgendasshtmParks)Utterances regarding the bodies needing to be placedback in the Kiel Cemetery ground are still strong

The best example of how the absent Kiel bodieshave been linked to larger political debates in whichthe brothers are used to historically and culturallyground debates around development can be found inCorinne Escobarrsquos preservation newsletters seeking tomotivate community action around the ranch Escobarwrites in 2005 lsquoAfter thirty years that section of KielRanch where the graves were situated still sits unde-velopedrsquo (Escobar 2005 2) Escobar and others invokethe anxiety over the fate of the bodies in both instancesas a way to materially demonstrate their perceptionof the cityrsquos irresponsible management and even dis-respect of the site But further both parties concernsover the bodies as represented by comments by Es-cobar and the former Mayor highlight the ways thatthe bodies become a material and emotional touch-stone for all involved to reference and to be motivatedby For all parties even those who didnrsquot expect itthe Kiel Brothers remain active figures in the fate ofthe ranch They haunt it in their potential to be re-buried or commemorated They remain unburied andin progress Their fate like the fate of the ranch isundecided and yet it is clear some even feel movedto speak for them and to demand that something bedone with their property The tone of Escobarrsquos pleasthus sounds like a cry to honour and put the dead torest because in part it is

Discussion

Here we have presented two lsquochaptersrsquo in the historyof the Kiel brothers The first a traditional biohistoryof Edwin and William Kiel detailing their migrationWest some facts of their life and their violent deathsthat is based in traditional historical archival researchand past forensic analysis The narrative ends in aviolent shoot-out between two brothers who sufferfrom the shame and dishonour that comprise manystories of men and their struggle for redemption onthe Wild West Supported only by a context-lackingosteological analysis this narrative has persisted forover 75 years and is sometimes still referenced todayby unknowing Vegas residents ignorant or dismissiveof the details of trauma or the symbolic or politicaldimensions of the bodies of Edwin and William KielBodies serve only in the most rudimentary sense aseffective agents in this narrative in that they are evi-dence of Wild West violence or the violent nature of

Frontier America Such a narrative however is justtoo simple

The second narrative we offer inspired by ourtheoretical interests in agency and the post-mortempolitical lives of dead bodies (Verdery 1999) ap-proaches two skeletons very differently than a tra-ditional osteological profile First the bodies are notonly read for biological clues regarding the age sexand possible cause of death of the individuals Bodiesare seen simultaneously as people but also as objectsand symbols that have their own history beyond bi-ological death Injury burial excavation even lateranalyses all form chapters in the lsquobiographiesrsquo of thebodies of Edwin and Kiel Their separation from theirmaterial effects (eg their boots) their movement tothe University of Nevada Las Vegas and the waysthese events are invoked in political scenes are evi-dence that tracing the movement and presence and ab-sence both materially and symbolically can shed greatlight into how their being as agents may be abductedby the living We can see how the simple emotionaltension of dealing with murder victims their corpsesand property impacts all of the actors involved in the2006 city meeting we discuss above The mere pres-ence of the bodies and the mere reality that their fateis unresolved is enough to emotionally move all par-ties towards greater concern in the fate of the ranchBecause of this a plan to honour the Kiel brothers hasbeen developed (Coe and Van Loo Consultants Inc2010)

In having post-mortem social lives the broth-ers became many unexpected things that could notbe foreseen in 1900 Like other lsquonotable deadrsquo (Tar-low 2008) the brotherrsquos bones have been the objectsof forensic analysis or evidence As evidence theyrsquovehad their own agential force in testing and invalidat-ing various hypotheses about their own violent deaths(Brooks amp Brooks 1984 Crandall et al 2014) The ma-terial evidence of violence holds great authority inforensics and the hypothesis-testing business of bioar-chaeology Yet they have also become ghosts believedto haunt a contentious property in local folklore Indoing so the brothers have re-shaped political dis-cussions and perceptions of the Kiel Ranch such thatit can be seen as a lsquodeathscapersquo (Maddrell amp Sidaway2010 Young amp Light 2013) Narratives centred on thedead brothers or their corpses have reconfigured theranch as a space where the fate of the property is in-explicably linked to the fate of the bones and signifi-cantly for modern Vegas residents the cowboy bootsof the brothers The Kiel Ranchrsquos future has been im-pacted by both the potential presence of the bodiesas well as their current absence which has directlyimpacted ongoing site planning of future renovations

Ghostly Gunslingers

to the ranch property Finally the brothers have alsotestified to the reality of violence in the American West(Crist 2006)

The bodies of the brothers and the circumstancesof their death have had other unexpected effects be-yond serving as tools to extend the agency of Vegasleaders debating a historic site Remember that in the1900s the Kiel family buried Edwin in a way to markhim as a sinner and used mortuary ritual to severties with the space by burying Edwin deviantly Thisended the Kiel tenure of the land and also discouragedthe Stewarts and others from buying the propertyRead as a kind of mortuary ritual the deviant buri-als of the brothers served to de-couple the Kiel familyfrom the land and also made the space undesirablefor others such as the Stewart family Burial alwaysa socially-productive act of memory work (Williams2004) enabled the bodies the ability to alter the histor-ical trajectory of the ranch in ways unforeseeable tothe Kiel family in 1900 or to city planners in the 1970swho ended up unearthing the bodies seventy yearslater

Unexpectedly the abandonment of the ranch bythe Kiels (reinforced by the presence of the dead bod-ies of the dishonourable brothers) brought new buy-ers and their industries into town The deaths of thebrothers as well as the grief that their loss broughtmotivated the sale of the property to a railroad com-pany Future owners brought rodeos vacation spacesand farming to Vegas With each shift in ownershipthe ranch stayed on the cutting edge of burgeoningindustry across the decades Now as the City debateshow it will use the property the ranch and the bodiesof the Kiel Brothers have been pulled back into largerdebates about how suburbs are going to form nextto formerly rural metropolitan empires mdash a questionthat is becoming more important as population sizesexplode in the Urban West (Travis 2007) The ranchand data generated from the brotherrsquos bodies have re-animated the brothers who have found their way backinto academic and public debates since they last sawprint in 1984 Indeed each time Edwin and Williamare put to rest they are re-animated in new and notfully foreseeable ways

Conclusion

Drawing on the pre- and post-mortem biographiesof Edwin and William Kiel we have endeavouredto demonstrate the ways in which bones ghosts andforensic evidence have all impacted Vegas residentsanthropologists and city officials As the living takenew forms as corpses then bones then data his-torical displays and finally as the subjects of future

political and academic debates they influence thosewho study them bury them survive them and endup buried beside them

Tracing the transformations of the Kiel brothersas they are resurrected in new forms is not only aninteresting endeavour in tracking the ways materialsare given new cultural meaning The bioarchaeologyof postmortem agency is always more than a post-mortem biography As we have shown here studiesof the dead as they lsquoliversquo amongst us again shed lighton larger cultural processes

In the case of the Kiel brothers tracing their livesas dead bodies ghosts and other things we have beenable to investigate the cultural production of the KielRanch to gain insights into how Vegas residents arematerially negotiating political tension surroundingdevelopment in suburbs across the American Westand to better understand how myths of the Wild Westare negotiated through the transmutation of the onceliving and their memorial spaces Because no cityor state park yet stands where the Kiel Ranch oncethrived we remain unsure of how these various po-litical and social processes will play out What we aresure of is that these processes would appear randomwithout considering the bodies and spirits who haveinfluenced the fate of the ranch and by extension thefuture developments of the City of North Las Vegas

Beyond this the death histories of the KielBrotherrsquos bones remind us that absent bodies whenculturally seen as lsquoout of placersquo or not yet lsquoat restrsquocan also exert force on the living In their absencethe brothers can be invoked as yet another motivationfor preserving the ranch site This historical examplemight thus inform other bioarchaeologists examiningmissing bodies bodies out of place or deviant burialsand help provide an analogue for how they may besocially generative even in their absence Focusing onthe social and symbolic transformations of the KielBrotherrsquos dead bodies and documenting their effectson the living makes clear that death is rarely the endof things Rather the ongoing social lives of the KielBrother ghosts bones and data remind us that deathis not an exit but rather an entry into new forms oflife rich with an array of symbolic political and so-cial possibilities for all of us particularly the violentlykilled and out of place

Acknowledgements

Thanks are owed to Bettina Arnold William Bauer KathrynBaustian Cheryl Anderson and Debra Martin whosecomments on earlier incarnations of this work were invalu-able We would also like to thank the Graduate and Profes-sional Student Association of the University of Nevada Las

Vegas for funding to share this work Finally the Kiel familyClark County Preservation Association and City of NorthLas Vegas should be thanked for making the documentaryand skeletal data used in this article easily accessible Wetoo are invested in the Ranchrsquos future and are grateful to allparties concerned for its future

John J Crandall4505 S Maryland Pkwy Mailstop 455003 Department of

Anthropology University of Nevada Las Vegas Las VegasNV 89154mdash5003 USA Email

Cranda28unlvnevadaedu

Ryan P HarrodDepartment of Anthropology 3211 Providence Drive

University of Alaska Anchorage Anchorage AK 99508USA

Email rharrod2uaaalaskaedu

References

Blanes R amp D Espırito Santo 2014 The Social Life of SpiritsChicago (IL) The University of Chicago Press

Brooks ST amp RH Brooks 1984 Problems of burial ex-humation historical and forensic aspects in Hu-man Identification Case Studies in Forensic Anthropol-ogy eds TA Rathburn amp JE Buikstra Springfield(IL) Charles C Thomas 64ndash86

Coe and Van Loo Consultants Inc 2010 Kiel Ranch His-toric Park Comprehensive Development and PreservationPlan North Las Vegas (NV) City of North Las Vegas

Courtwright DT 1998 Violent Land Single Men and SocialDisorder from the Frontier to the Inner City Cambridge(MA) Harvard University Press

Crandall JJ RP Harrod CP Anderson amp KM Baustian2014 Interpreting gunshot trauma as context clue acase study from historic North Las Vegas Nevada inBioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on ViolenceHow Violent Death is Interpreted from Skeletal Remainseds DL Martin amp CP Anderson Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press 289ndash308

Crist TA 2006 The Good the Bad and the Ugly bioarchae-ology and the modern gun culture debate HistoricalArchaeology 40 109ndash30

Crossland Z 2009 Of clues and signs the dead body and itsevidentiary traces American Anthropologist new series111 69ndash80

del Pilar Blanco M amp E Peeren 2013 The Spectralities ReaderGhosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural TheoryNew York (NY) Bloomsbury Academic

Escobar C 2005 The status of Kiel Ranch the city of NorthLas Vegas has killed but not yet buried the oldest his-toric site in the state in PACC October Preservation As-sociation of Clark County October 2005 1ndash4 Available athttpwwwthegilcreaseorchardorgsitesdefaultfilesPACC20Newsletter20Sept202005pdf

Fontein J amp J Harries 2013 The vitality and effi-cacy of human substances Critical African Studies 5115ndash26

Geary P 1986 Sacred commodities the circulation of me-dieval relics in The Social Life of Things Commoditiesin Cultural Perspective ed A Appadurai CambridgeCambridge University Press 169ndash91

Geertz C 1957 Ritual and social change a Javanese exam-ple American Anthropologist 59 32ndash54

Gell A 1998 Art and Agency an Anthropological Theory Ox-ford Clarendon Press

Geller PL 2012 Parting (with) the dead body partibilityas evidence of commoner ancestor veneration AncientMesoamerica 23 115ndash30

Gillespie SD 2001 Personhood agency and mortuary rit-ual a case study from the ancient Maya Journal ofAnthropological Archaeology 20 73ndash112

Hallam E J Hockey amp G Howarth 1999 Beyond the BodyDeath and Social Identity New York Routledge

Hallam E amp JL Hockey 2001 Death Memory and MaterialCulture Oxford Berg Publishers

Hallam E amp G Howarth 1999 Beyond the Body Death andSocial Identity London Routledge

Harper S 2010 The social agency of dead bodies MortalityPromoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying15 308ndash22

Ingold T 2007 Materials against materiality ArchaeologicalDialogues 14 1ndash16

Krmpotich C J Fontein amp J Harries 2010 The substance ofbones the emotive materiality and affective presenceof human remains Journal of Material Culture 15 371ndash84

Las Vegas Sun 2002 Thursday August 22 Funding Sought toBuild Park around Kiel Ranch

Las Vegas Sun 1999 Thursday December 30 A CenturyTurns

Latour B 1999 Pandorarsquos Hope Essays on the Reality of ScienceStudies Cambridge (MA) Harvard University Press

Maddrell A amp JD Sidaway 2010 Deathscapes Spacesfor Death Dying Mourning and Remembrance SurreyAshgate Publishing

Martin PT 1988 Kiel Ranch San Francisco (CA) HistoricAmerican Buildings Survey National Park ServiceWestern Region Department of the Interior

Mattheeuws C 2008 Do Crisps Flavoured with ChickenTikka have Something in Common with Central-East Malagasy Ancestral Bodies Unpublished pa-per presented at lsquoWhat Lies Beneath Exploringthe Affective Presence and Emotive Materiality ofHuman Bones Research Workshoprsquo University ofEdinburgh

Moehring EP amp MS Green 2005 Las Vegas Cen-tennial History Reno (NV) University of NevadaPress

Novak SA 2014 How to say things with bodies mean-ingful violence on an American frontier in The Rout-ledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflicteds C Knusel amp MJ Smith Abingdon Routledge542ndash59

Ghostly Gunslingers

Ortner SB 2006 Anthropology and Social Theory CulturePower and the Acting Subject Durham (NC) DukeUniversity Press

Robb J 2013 Creating death an archaeology of dying inThe Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death andBurial eds S Tarlow amp LN Stutz Oxford OxfordUniversity Press 411ndash57

Slotkin R 1998 Gunfighter Nation the Myth of the Frontier inTwentieth-century America Norman (OK) Universityof Oklahoma Press

Tarlow S 2008 The extraordinary history of OliverCromwellrsquos head in Past Bodies Body Centred Researchin Archaeology eds D Boric amp JE Robb OxfordOxbow Books 69ndash78

Townley CM 1973 Helen J Stewart First lady of Las Ve-gas part I Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 16 214ndash44

Townley CM 1974 Helen J Stewart First lady of LasVegas part II Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 172ndash32

Travis WR 2007 New Geographies of the American WestLand Use and the Changing Patterns of Place Washington(DC) Island Press

Verdery K 1999 The Political Lives of Dead Bodies Reburialand Postsocialist Change New York (NY) ColumbiaUniversity Press

Weinstock JA 2004 Spectral America Phantoms and the Na-tional Imagination Madison (WI) The University ofWisconsin Press

Williams H 2004 Death warmed up the agency of bod-ies and bones in early Anglo-Saxon cremation ritesJournal of Material Culture 9 263ndash91

Young C amp D Light 2013 Corpses dead body politics andagency in human geography following the corpse ofDr Petru Groza Transactions of the Institute of BritishGeographers 38 135ndash48

Author biographies

John J Crandall is a PhD student in the Department of An-thropology University of Nevada Las Vegas His researchinterests in social identity and inequality have resulted inthe publication of Tracing Childhood Bioarchaeological Investi-gations of Early Lives in Antiquity which he co-edited

Ryan P Harrod is an Assistant Professor of Anthropologyat the University of Alaska Anchorage His research inter-ests in violence and inequality have resulted in the publi-cation of Bioarchaeology of Climate Change and Violence andboth Bioarchaeology an Integrated Approach to Working withHuman Remains and The Bioarchaeology of Violence which areco-edited

Bones bodies and spirits tracing post-mortem agency

Life and death on the Kiel Ranch 1879-1900

The afterlives of the Kiel Brothers 1901-2006

Hauntings and bodies out of place the spectrality of Kiel Ranch

Discussion

Conclusion

References

Ghostly Gunslingers the Postmortem Lives of the KielBrothers Nevadarsquos First Frontiersmen

John J Crandall amp Ryan P Harrod

In October 1900 Edwin and William Kiel were killed outside of Nevadarsquos oldest standingstructure in North Las Vegas Since their death the Kiel brothers have been analysed bybioarchaeologists and forensic experts Their ranch now a historic site remains the propertyof the city of North Las Vegas and is a contested space which has seen little developmentIn this article we discuss the post-mortem social lives of the brothers within the context ofdebates about the ranch and the brotherrsquos bones which remain separated How the brothershave taken on various symbolic forms after death and how their bones have not yet beenreturned to the site are examined We document the ways the brothers have been usedrhetorically as tools by the living as they have debated the future of the ranch We argue thatthe brotherrsquos bones even in their absence are effective tools in ongoing political debatesThis article provides an example of how absent bodies or bodies out of place can serve assecondary agents Additionally the study provides bioarchaeologists with a narrative ofhow the dead are more than tools but may unexpectedly alter human behaviour

Death death rituals and the bones of the long deadare perennial topics in anthropology particularly ar-chaeology In discussing death archaeologists are in-creasingly likely to think of it not only as a biologi-cal transition but also as a social transformation Asarticles in this special section attest death and theceasing of the biological life of the human body isnot the end of social engagement (Robb 2013) Talk-ing about death anthropologically provides a windowthrough which to consider an array of topics of inter-est to anthropology Death rituals are political sitesof contestation (Geertz 1957) opportunities for doingmemory work and maintaining community identity(Geller 2012) and messy engagements between liv-ing actors objects and liminal things (often corpses)which straddle the realm between being both socialactors and objects

By investigating the post-mortem histories ofbodies it is possible to understand the work that bod-ies do as they are interacted with given meaning usedas metaphors and treated as semiotic vehicles andtools through which the living achieve their ends andby which the living are also constrained (Novak 2014

Tarlow 2008 Verdery 1999) Here this approach isextended to investigate the ways that two nineteenth-century frontiersmen and their bodies remain activein North Las Vegasrsquo social life In both their presenceand absence the bodies and supposed ghosts of theKiel Brothers of Nevadarsquos historic Kiel Ranch remaineffective social agents Their post-mortem biographiesprovide an opportunity to extend ongoing interests inthe lsquosocial livesrsquo of spirits and objects across anthropol-ogy into a bioarchaeological context Examining boththe presence and absence of the Kiel Brotherrsquos bones aswell as their identities as modern ghosts provides anopportunity for bioarchaeology to consider how theabsence of bodies or bodies out of their proper placemay be informative about past politics and social in-teraction in historic America and beyond

Bones bodies and spirits tracing post-mortemagency

By exploring the post-mortem histories of two long-dead frontiersmen Edwin and William Kiel whounexpectedly and violently died in October 1900 and

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 243 487ndash497 Ccopy 2014 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researchdoi101017S0959774314000602 Received 8 Jul 2013 Accepted 6 Oct 2013 Revised 4 Apr 2014

Ghostly Gunslingers

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Documents

Ghostly Gunslingers - Crandall & Harrod