Beheading Bugs and Spearing Stags: Depictions of Animal Sacrifice in Mesoamerica

Author(s): Sarah Newman

Year: 2019

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The practice of human sacrifice is one of the defining traits of ancient Mesoamerica, at least according to the modern imagination. But painted objects, carvings, and codices reveal that nonhuman animals often served as sacrificial victims as well. Were some classes or species of animals ritually killed more often than others? Were certain animals killed in particular ways? In what social, symbolic, and/or spatial contexts did animal sacrifice take place? Are temporal and regional variations discernible? This paper attempts to answer these questions and to probe the meaning of animal sacrifice for relationships between humans and their nonhuman counterparts in ancient Mesoamerica.

Cite this Record

Beheading Bugs and Spearing Stags: Depictions of Animal Sacrifice in Mesoamerica. Sarah Newman. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 451709)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -94.197; min lat: 16.004 ; max long: -86.682; max lat: 21.984 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24946