Killing and Sacrifice in the Precolonial Codices

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human sacrifice and cannibalism are hallmarks of colonial discourse, which was developed to justify the conquest of the Americas. Particularly Aztec worldview has been presented consistently as pivoting on human sacrifices to “bloodthirsty devils” (in terminology of the conquerors). Eyewitness accounts are conspicuously scarce, but this paradigm dominates most historical written sources of the colonial period as from the first records (e.g., Cortés) and was later further elaborated in retrospect by the Spanish missionaries (e.g., Sahagún). Consequently, many archaeological remains and ancient images are perceived through this lens, often without scrutinizing the evidence and without searching alternative possibilities of interpretation. Clearly, there existed ritualized forms of death penalty for criminals and enemies (e.g., by stabbing them in the chest), but how many of those may be termed “sacrifices”? The ancient cultures gave special funerary treatments to bodily remains, but to what extent do these indicate “sacrifices” rather than worship of ancestral relics? Decolonial theory and Indigenous Methodologies stress the importance of discrimination-free language and thought. In an effort to deconstruct and elucidate the issue, this paper will examine relevant scenes from precolonial Mexican pictographic codices and compare them to colonial accounts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 2: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38588.0