Subadult human sacrifices in Midnight Terror Cave

Author(s): Michael Prout

Year: 2015

Summary

Children throughout Mesoamerica were preferred sacrificial victims, especially to water deities. Because caves were associated with rain, ethnohistoric sources mention the sacrifice of children in caves. The importance of children in sacrifice was documented early on my Edward Thompson’s dredging of the Cenote of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza. More recently archaeological investigations of caves have recovered have recorded the skeletal remains of children that have been interpreted as sacrificial victims. This paper reports on the juvenile skeletal assemblage from Midnight Terror Cave with an eye toward refining our understanding of the age at death with this large sample. Attempts will also be made to determine method of sacrifice.

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Cite this Record

Subadult human sacrifices in Midnight Terror Cave. Michael Prout. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 395434)

Keywords

General
Cave sacrifices subadult

Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica

Spatial Coverage

min long: -107.271; min lat: 12.383 ; max long: -86.353; max lat: 23.08 ;