New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ancient Mesoamericans deemed ritual violence a crucial form of merit-making with the divine. Until recently, humans themselves were considered supreme “food staples.” Their bodies were to vitalize the cosmos at the pulse of consecrated time intervals. Victims were prepared and sacrificed in prescribed ways to liberate their animate essences, believed to be harbored mainly in a person’s heart and blood. Past death, the sanctified fleshly remnants would sometimes be processed and exhibited as trophies or relics. Although ritualized violence is abundantly recorded in iconography and has been inferred from simultaneous multiple interments and deposits of articulated body segments, only the last two decades of scholarship have seen big strides towards a more nuanced exploration of sacrificial practices. This session examines old and new graphic, archaeological, and forensic evidence across the Mesoamerican landscapes to discuss meanings, choreographies, occasions, and ceremonial devices related to ritual violence, associated body processing and in some contexts, the public display of bodies and body parts. Interpretative and methodological caveats are addressed in the way.

Other Keywords
Iconography and epigraphy • Highland Mesoamerica: Postclassic • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Iconography and Art • Ritual and Symbolism • Warfare, Violence, and Conflict • Maya: Postclassic • Maya: Classic • sacrifice • reciprocity

Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) • North America (Continent) • Belize (Country) • Hidalgo (State / Territory) • Colima (State / Territory) • Queretaro (State / Territory) • Michoacan (State / Territory) • Mexico (State / Territory) • Morelos (State / Territory) • Jalisco (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Blood on the Stones: Heart Sacrifice and Sacrificial Altars in the Northern Maya Lowlands and Mexico-Tenochtitlan (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel González López. Jeremy Coltman. Karl A. Taube. Travis Stanton.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Heart sacrifice constituted one of the most basic yet fundamental tenets of Mesoamerican ritual practice. At Early Postclassic Chichen Itza, as with the later Aztec of Tenochtitlan, hearts and blood were offered to the bellicose solar deity whose daily journey through the sky not only depended...

  • Decapitation and the Vulnerable Nature of Joints among the Aztecs (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prisoners of war were ritually killed by heart extraction and were often decapitated. Archaeologists at Templo Mayor found skulls with the first cervical vertebrae attached, indicating death by decapitation. Lethal weapons such as flint sacrificial knives were also found near decapitated...

  • The Disembodied Eye in Maya Art and Ritual Practice (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Miller.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented in Mesoamerica. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could been have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich...

  • The Funerary or Nonfunerary Human Assemblages from the Initial Series Group at Chichen Itza (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nelda Issa Marengo. José Osorio León. Francisco Pérez Ruíz.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human skeletal assemblages from Chichen Itza and its surrounding regions are complex, which makes Chichen Itza a prime location to study mortuary practices. The complexity stems most likely from Chichen Itza’s multicultural relationships with other groups not only within the Yucatán Peninsula...

  • Heads, Skulls, and Sacred Scaffolds: New Studies on Ritual Body Processing and Display among the Ancient Maya of Yucatán (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Vera Tiesler. Virginia Miller.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among late Maya religious complexes, Chichen Itza stands as a monumental landmark. Among the enigmatic aspects of Chichen’s ceremonial innovations count skull racks, where the heads of sacrificed victims were exhibited in rows. It was the first Mesoamerican city to erect a permanent, decorated...

  • Human Sacrifice and Body Processing in Late Eastern Mesoamerica: New Evidence from Toniná, Lagartero, and Champotón (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith Ruiz. Isabel Casar Aldrete. Vera Tiesler Blos.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A number of non-reverential, highly processed human assemblages containing mutilated sternal bones have been documented in different parts of Postclassic period Mesoamerica and beyond after being described by Carmen Pijoan in a massive ritual deposit from Tlatelolco, in the Aztec capital. In...

  • Mesoamerican Ballgame, Human Sacrifice, Ritual Decapitation, and Trophy Taking: Variations in Ways of Displaying (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emilie Carreón Blaine.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The purpose of this collaboration is to present the results of the analysis of a human skull located at the center of the ball court of Santa Rosa, Chiapas, and to review the implications it presents for the study of the Mesoamerican ball game and its relationship to human sacrifice. It is a...

  • Open Chests and Broken Hearts: New Perspectives on Human Heart Sacrifice in Mesoamerica (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Guilhem Olivier. Vera Tiesler.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beyond the general idea of benefiting society and placating the divine, the polyvalent symbols and meanings of ancient religious sacrifices can be interpreted properly only after combining different disciplinary lenses. In this paper, we scrutinize iconographic and ethnohistorical testimonies of...

  • Take My Heart, Take My Head: Death among Gods in the Codex Borgia (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual violence is well represented in the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece from early sixteenth-century Central Mexico. Narrative scenes depict Venus gods alongside deities honored during seasonal *veintena festivals known from the Valley of Mexico and Tlaxcala. The Aztec Tlacaxipehualiztli festival...

  • Toward an Ideology of Mesoamerican Ritual Sacrifice: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlos Rincon Mautner.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a cultural adaptive strategy, ritual sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica has had multiple purposes including providing a sense of control over the forces of nature aimed at attaining desired outcomes, especially those related to agricultural production. When human sacrifice was involved, such...

  • Venerating Death and Fertility: Implications of Late Terminal Classic Maya Use of Monuments with Skeletal Imagery (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Guido Krempel.

    This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on specific attestations found on Maya monuments featuring human skeletal iconography and to the concave round depressions used in place of their skulls. Such characteristic representation on monuments is mostly limited to the Maya Puuc region of the western Yucatán Peninsula...