Cannibalism: to emote or not to emote

I was reading a paper that looked at two contrasting arguments on cannibalism at a New Mexican site (from around 1150 AD). One side presented evidence for the practice in the area; it was calm and straightforward. They gave bone analysis, coprolite diagnostics and comparisons to other sites at the time as evidence and in all their argument seemed sound and plausible. All the simple scientific wording and evidence gave me confidence in their findings. The next argument was a reaction paper that torn into the first, saying NO to cannibalism. It was full of emotion and political correctness and hyper awareness of past mistakes. I was thoroughly put off by the tone of the paper that it took me a reread (or two) to see that they may have some valid points. They talked about the possibility that the evaluation methods may not have been up to snuff to apply the cannibal label.

So whats the big deal? Well it turns out that our oh so enlightened forefathers seemed to have used cannibalism as a reason to enslave/murder/convert/subjugate other cultures. That means that cannibalism was not practiced as much as was reported and that now cannibalism becomes a headed topic.

When you read the word 'cannibal' in the beginning of this post what popped to mind? Was is an aboriginal person dressed in a leaf skirt or such, gathered around a stew pot with a poor victim sitting in it? (hopefully you did not check out the picture before you started reading..) I would not be entirely surprised if this was the image. Why? Why media of course. Cartoons are full of cannibal 'joke'/stereotypes. They all show the 'savage' trying to cook some 'enlightened' soul from a good upstanding country. It is because of these images that people give such strong reactionary papers. I assume that it was trying to protect the descendants and the idea of the past culture as a whole, but I felt the pure negative emotion and the political angle did the opposite. It drew me to the first paper, it made me want to defend it from the onslaught.

Have you ever encountered such a paper? On that had merits but they were so hard to tease from beneath the emotions of the writer? How do you think this could effect the story told? (I think that it could harm the message, no matter how well meaning/correct it may be). Ethics tell me to protect people from harm. So is hypothesizing about past cannibalism harm? It could be in some circumstances, so the second argument has strong merit in calling for stronger evidence and surety before throwing the "cannibal" label around. I just wish it had been more calm and even toned, like the first paper.