HUMAN SACRIFICE DURING THE EPICLASSIC PERIOD IN THE NORTHERN BASIN OF MEXICO (original) (raw)
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Toward an Archaeology of Ritual Practice in southern Central America (2018, Paris)
Archaeology studies past practices through fields of action. In Mesoamerica, such fields exist across different scales of analysis, and for example lead research to identify individual or family routines in domestic and workshop settings. At the opposite end of this are large-scale periodic communal practices, often referred to as political or ritual. In these latter fields, insights into longue durée transformation are prone to be foregrounded at the expense of insights into human actions and its transmission within a group. The settings for such rituals are invariably referred to as 'public', 'ceremonial' or 'communal', depending on the archaeological region of period in question. Ritual practices in indigenous societies in Central America are mostly explained by viewing ritual in systematic terms, echoing Sahlins and Geertz. Chiefly authority is seen to be combined with that of ritual practitioner, rendering ritual itself seemingly a-historical and closely linking it to questions of political power. Ritual activity, and its pertaining material culture, is thus proposed as an irreducible functionalist fact, typically regarded for divination, communication with supernatural realms, and symbolic violence. Here, I will argue for a historical view on ritual in the prehistories we assemble and study, focusing attention on the question of ritual landscapes in southern Central America-a region with ample indicators for ritualized activity, but archaeologically challenged by a material culture with an abstract visual language, and a historical record lacking in individual events, except perhaps for volcanic eruptions. Spanish: La arqueología estudia prácticas pasadas a través de campos de acción. En Mesoamérica, tales campos existen en diferentes escalas de análisis, y por ejemplo apoyan a identificar rutinas individuales o familiares en entornos domésticos y en talleres. En el extremo opuesto, se encuentran las prácticas comunitarias periódicas a gran escala, a menudo denominadas 'políticas' o 'rituales'. En los últimos campos, los conocimientos sobre la transformación longue durée son propensos a ser enfocados a expensas de la comprensión de las acciones humanas y su transmisión dentro de un grupo. Los espacios para tales rituales se denominan invariablemente como 'públicos', 'ceremoniales' o 'comunales', dependiendo de la región o período arqueológico en cuestión. Las prácticas rituales en las sociedades indígenas en el sur de Centroamérica se explican mayormente viendo a rituales en términos sistémicos, haciéndose eco de Sahlins y Geertz. La autoridad principal se considera combinado con la del especialista ritual, convirtiendo el ritual en algo aparentemente a-histórico y vinculándolo estrechamente a cuestiones de poder político. La actividad ritual, y su cultura material pertinente, se propone, así como un hecho funcionalista irreductible, típicamente destinado a la adivinación, la comunicación con los ámbitos sobrenaturales y la violencia simbólica. Aquí, propondré una visión histórica en las prehistorias que reunimos y estudiamos, enfocado en los paisajes rituales del sur de Centroamérica-una región rica en referencias a actividad ritual, pero desafiada arqueológicamente por cultura material con lenguaje visual abstracto, y un registro histórico que carece de eventos individuales, a excepción quizás de las erupciones volcánicas. 2
Aztecs (Doris Kurella, Martin Berger and Inés de Castro, eds.): 254-265, 2019
Brief discussion of the different forms of religious offerings and sacrifices, with a short historical critique of the traditional (colonial) ideas about supposed human sacrifice.
Commoner Ritual and Ideology in Ancient Mesoamerica
2007
Commoner Ritual, Commoner Ideology: (Sub-)Alternate Views of Social Complexity in Hispanic Mesoamerica Tradition and Transformation: Village Ritual at Tetimpa as a Template for Early Teotihuacan Commoner Ritual at Teotihuacan, Central Mexico: Methodological Considerations Ritual and Ideology Among Classic Maya Rural Commoners at Copan, Honduras Smoke, Soot, and Censers: A Perspective on Ancient Commoner Household Ritual Behaviour from the Naco Valley, Honduras Commoner Rituals, Resistance, and the Classic-to-Post-classic Transition in Ancient Mesoamenca Shrines , Offerings, and Post-classic Continuity in Zapotec Religion Altar Egos: Domestic Ritual and Social Identity in Post-classic Cholula, Mexico A Socioeconomic Interpretation of Figurine Assemblages from Late Post-classic Morelos, Mexico Steps to a Holistic Household Archaeology.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2014
This article offers new understanding to commoner ritual in central Mexico before the rise of the Aztec Empire through an examination of domestic ritual and everyday practice in Early to Middle Postclassic (AD 900–1350) households in Xaltocan. It also seeks to better understand the ways in which elites negotiate and reinvent ritual traditions to gain and maintain power. In this study, I integrate multiple lines of evidence including ethnohistory, household archaeology and burials to understand the organization, practice and meaning of ritual among commoners before the rise of the Aztec Empire. I argue that pre-Aztec commoner ritual worked to foster solidarity, social continuity and collective memory and was intimately concerned with the protection of household members and the maintenance of household and universal equilibrium. While some of the symbolism and rituals documented in pre-Aztec domestic contexts appear similar to those depicted in Aztec contexts, I argue that state rituals held different meanings as Aztec elites adopted and transformed widely-held commoner rituals and symbols to craft an ideology that promoted their own political agenda. Ultimately, domestic- and state-level ritual should be seen as part of an ever-changing, but necessarily intertwined, historical and political process.
Tiesler_Discussion_Ritual Violence Ancient Andes_Cap.XV_2016.pdf
Multilayered social phenomena, such as ritualized violence of the past and specifically human sacrifice, can only be studied and understood culturally after combining scientific approximations and blending different lines of hard and discursive evidence. This paper discusses the chapters of an recent volume edited by Haagen Klaus and Marla Toyne on ritual violence in the Andes and adds a view from Mesoamerica.
THE BODY SACRIFICED: A BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF RITUAL VIOLENCE IN ANCIENT TÚCUME, PERU
Journal of Religion and Violence
Human lives and bodies become transformed into sacred offerings during sacrificial rites. We can recognize these transformative actions in the archaeological record based on the location of human burials – often in association with sacred spaces – and the evidence of peri-mortem manipulation of the bodies. This paper will describe and discuss the different ways in which human bodies have been manipulated in ancient Andean rites of human sacrifice as specific death rituals, outside of traditional or normative mortuary practices. I introduce the concept of the “body sacrificed” as a means through which to identify particular ritual significance in the treatment of these special sacred offerings. I use an example of human sacrifice from Túcume on the Northern Coast of Peru, as well as comparison with other documented sacrifice traditions across the Andean region. Using a bioarchaeological approach can help elucidate sacrifice rituals and practices with the focus on identifying and interpreting the physical manipulation of the body via evidence left on the skeleton. Furthermore, with comparative ethnographic data, we can identify the symbolic meaning in human burial arrangements and the manipulation of the bodies. I argue that the treatment of the body reflects specific symbolic gestures as part of the ritual process and that the death of the individual is only the part of a more complex process. Thus, we can elucidate possible meanings behind these transformative sacrificial rites in pre-Hispanic times.
RITUAL DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES: A STUDY OF MORTUARY BEHAVIORS AT TEOTIHUACAN
2009
The research presented here confronts the issue of ritual variation and its role in structuring the social dynamics of ancient Teotihuacan, a state that dominated central Mexico during the first half-millennium A.D. Most of Teotihuacan's urban population lived in apartment compounds located across the city, but the nature of these co-residing groups is not well understood. Even less is known about how subordinate settlements beyond the city limits were organized and to what degree they identified socially with urban Teotihuacan. Because ritual practices are salient in the negotiation of social identities related to gender, age, ethnicity, social status, and religious affiliation, they are an important focus of archaeological research.