FEEDING THE GODS IN EASTERN MESOAMERICA:

THE BIOARCHAEOLOGY OF HUMAN SACRIFICE AND RELATED FORMS OF RITUAL BODY PROCESSING

 

Vera Tiesler (Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán)

 

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Mesoamericans conceived and still conceive the need of religious merit-making with the Gods as a hierarchically organized cosmic food chain, which operates between the transpiring human sphere and a divine anecumene, which needs to be “fed”. Until recently, humans themselves were held to be supreme “foodstaples”, which were thought to vitalize the cosmos at the pulse of defined festivities and time cycles. Victims of ritual killings were prepared and slaughtered in prescribed ways to liberate effectively their animate essences, believed to rest mainly in the person’s heart and blood circuit. In the aftermath of death, the sanctified fleshly remnants would be processed and partitioned, often used as trophies or relics still years and decades afterwards. My talk updates the state of knowledge and discussion of the practices surrounding human sacrifice. To this end, I combine different disciplinary lenses (namely, human taphonomy, archaeology, archaeometry, epi- and iconography) with the skeletal evidence of ritual violence and posthumous body processing, as documented among 45 archaeological eastern Mesoamerican sites that span the Classic, Postclassic and the onset of the colonial period. These human remains integrated caches, primary burials, and commingled termination deposits and fills. Their systematic review reveals different choreographies of ritual slaughter by way of throat-slashing, decapitation and/or heart extraction, each of which provides cues regarding the ceremonial devices used. Together, the reconstructions of ritualized violence reinforce the importance of intrinsic Mesomerican concepts of the human body as a cosmic model and conduit. My talk finalizes with a number of reflections regarding the political and ideological shifts that led to the massification and public display of ritualized violence past the Maya collapse, as showcased at Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Champotón, Campeche, and the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico.

 

(Talk in English)