Creations of the Lord: New World Slavery and Sacrifice

Summary

In the ancient cities of Ur and Chan Chan, excavations revealed that when a lord died, dozens of servants were sometimes put to death and buried with the lord. Such examples of retainer sacrifice, also mentioned for Aztec kings and documented in Maya tombs, raise questions about slavery, violence, and subjectivity. David Graeber has argued that slavery played a key role in the origin of commercial systems. The transition at issue concerns the melding of human economies (which make and remake relations between people) with commercial economies (which concern the acquisition of goods and wealth). Social currencies power human economies, but such money can never substitute for a person because each person and their relations are unique. Sufficient violence, however, can reduce a person to mere property, a slave. In a well-known passage from Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel states that the bondsman (the slave) has no consciousness of own: his/her essential nature is to live for the lord. Some aspects of captives and human sacrifice in the New World accord well with Graeber’s and Hegel’s position, yet there are salient differences. This paper explores these discrepancies and considers their consequences to a relational approach.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20449