Sacrifices, Retainers, or Disposal? The Social Roles of Ychsma Children from Funeral Contexts at the Site of Pachacamac

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ritual Violence and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: New Directions in the Field" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The excavation of numerous subadult burials from late prehispanic contexts at Pachacamac led us to question the archaeological and anthropological criteria used to identify human sacrifice. Identifying this practice requires a robust conceptual framework and analytical approach, and this is particularly necessary when dealing with subadults.

The frequent association of subadults with adult burials or in unusual locations or positions raises the question of retainer burials, as well as the manner in which non-normative subadult interments should be perceived: namely, differentiating between reverence, pragmatism and indifference

These questions are addressed by drawing on a corpus of several hundred individuals from Pachacamac, Peruvian Central Cost, spanning five centuries of occupation at the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ritual Violence and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes: New Directions in the Field   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38241.0