Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesoamerica: New Evidences and Theoretical Perspectives

The topic of sacrifice and human sacrifice in ancient Mesoamerica needs to be revisited in light of new evidence,theoretical models, and interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. The central question that scholars attempt to grapple with when it comes to bloodletting rituals, sacrifice of animals, or humans, is why? Why do humans collectively hurt themselves and or kill innocent animals and other human beings? Past theoretical approaches have immortalized and universalized cosmological principles and applied these uniformly to multifarious cultures in diverse time periods and in different regions of Mesoamerica. These outdated models have neglected unique interpretations, independent articulation, and sometimes wholesale reworking of inherited or imported sacrificial ideologies.These same models do not track permutations in ritual practices and concomitant artistic representations of these practices. This symposium addresses ritual sacrifices from new perspectives that include economic, political, and military motivations as well as agricultural, calendrical, and astronomical influences. A consideration of sacrificial ritual practices at all levels of social stratum (shamanism on elite and commoner levels) offers a more holistic perspective. This symposium will be interdisciplinary and will include site specific as well as comparative approaches and will be based on new iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological evidences.