Abstract
My intention in this contribution is to use the structural model of human sacrifice proposed by Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss (1964 [1898]) in order to interpret a variety of disparate data from southwestern Mesoamerica. Like any structural approach, the model does not account for the historicity of the diachronic dimensions of the phenomenon. There are reasons to suppose that the practice of human sacrifice in this region of Mesoamerica exhibited temporal and spatial differences, but lacking the necessary data to address and account for this variation, I will limit my analysis to a general model of cultural and behavioral precepts specific to human immolation. To achieve this objective, I will review both the data and the applicability of the model to five culturally constituted notions: specifically, those of personhood, the body, the community, the place, and the divinity.
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Notes
- 1.
These sets of man-bat and woman-maize in the material culture seem to exemplify the concept of “ritual condensation” (Neurath 2010: 567–568), expressive of an ambivalence between predation (hunting) and alliance (agriculture).
- 2.
The proposal of Michel Graulich is based on the exegesis of the stories of creation contained in Leyenda de los Soles.
- 3.
Danièle Dehouve (2010: 507–509) describes how among the Tlapanecs the sacrifice of a feline symbolically replaces the social institution of the municipal authority and that of dogs the social institution of the judicial authority.
- 4.
Saburo Sugiyama and Leonardo López Luján (2007: 130) consider that the two pumas and a wolf found in Offering 2 dedicated to the fourth version of the pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan probably were buried alive since they were caged. Furthermore, a coprolite was found associated with one of the pumas. However, the cages could have facilitated the ritual death of these dangerous animals (bleeding by slitting of the throat?), and the time needed to place such a complex offering of at least a day if not more would have allowed sufficient time for animals to defecate before being sacrificed.
- 5.
An osteological reanalysis of Burials 2 and 3 of Coxcatlán cave (Pijoán & Mansilla, 2010: 126–130) concludes that (1) these subadults were sacrificed by slitting of the throat [which leaves no cut marks in the bony tissue]; (2) the corpse of the child of Burial 3 was partially burned, exposing only the head to the fire for a brief period [this, nevertheless, led to the implosion of the skull and its fragmentation]; (3) the bodies were decapitated [without leaving cut marks in the cervical vertebrae]; (4) the burned and fragmented head of Burial 3 was defleshed using obsidian blades and scrapers [which left traces of cut marks in some muscle insertions, although the authors did not publish the number of cut marks or the affected muscle insertions]; and finally, the children were buried in such a manner that the disarticulated heads were interchanged between their bodies. However, there are reasons to infer that the alleged exchange of “decapitated heads” between burials described by Fowler and MacNeish resulted from an error in mixing the materials when the burials were removed since in his initial report MacNeish (1962: 9) does not mention such an exchange, and the published drawing of the funerary deposit (Fowler and MacNeish 1972: 267, fig. 113) correctly shows relative sizes and degrees of cranial ossification that match the estimated ages of the children. In turn, the mixture of materials led to inconsistencies in the designation of burials between the drawing and text in the work of Fowler and MacNeish. Moreover, Burials 4 and 5, two adult individuals buried beside Burials 2 and 3, show a differential mortuary treatment very similar to that of the children without evidence of decapitation and head swap. Therefore, nothing indicates the practice of postmortem decapitation in the cave of Coxcatlán, which leaves no basis for the inference of violent death by slitting of the throat. The traces of brief exposure to a low-intensity fire, which simply led to the smoking and black coloration of the ectocranial tissue, and the postmortem cut marks on the skull of Burial 3 must have been part of a mortuary treatment unrelated to human sacrifice.
- 6.
Guilhem Olivier (personal communication) suggests that the flute itself could have been used to call deer during their hunt, a proposal that is supported by a scene of deer hunting in a polychrome plate from Yucatan where hunters with deer headdresses and in quadruped position seemingly play flutes (see Schmidt et al. 1998: 561, No. 169).
- 7.
The term tlalpilli, which refers to the subdivision into four groups of 13 years of the 52-year Calendar Round, does not appear in the citation. I have added it to provide clarity to the original text.
- 8.
The interment associated with Complex 195 at Lambityeco (burials 67-1A and B) was placed once the plaza had been leveled but before the area was covered with a stucco floor. In addition, the inhumation was not simultaneous because the woman’s corpse (A) and a conical bowl near her right arm were placed first. Seemingly after the skeletonization of the corpse, the man’s corpse (B) was laid parallel to the right side of the woman and in an extended position on his right side. To keep it in such a position, several stones were placed between their bodies, several of them on the pelvic area of Burial A. A small bipod jar with a human representation displaying an emblem of the Rain deity (glyph C) was left as an offering. The jar contained some bones that possibly were subtracted from Burial A, including two proximal and one distal foot phalanges, as well as two unidentifiable fragments. To retrieve the skeletons during their excavations, the bones were covered with a substance that had an adhesive, which left a hardened soil layer on the surface of the bones and made it impossible to detect evidence of cut marks or of the manner in which the individuals may have been sacrificed.
- 9.
Alfonso Caso does not mention the presence of a ceramic bowl in this offering, but part of the edge of the vessel is visible in the published photograph.
- 10.
Enrique Méndez (1986a: 80) reports the discovery at the site of Cerro de la Campana, in Huitzo-Suchilquitongo, of primary burials in a seated position, “dismembered or decapitated … deposited in small stone boxes” and secondary burials of “skulls … placed in front of ceremonial buildings.” The specific location of these contexts in relation to a site plan is unknown, and his inferences are not supported by an osteological analysis of the human remains.
- 11.
The visual reconstruction of the purported skull rack at La Coyotera has changed from a display of heads that were impaled through the temporal bones (Spencer 1982: 239, Fig. 5.12) to a display of skulls resting on a shelflike rack (Spencer and Redmond 1997: 521, Figure 9.17). In addition, several inconsistencies in the interpretation of this feature are evident: (1) the lack of remains of upper cervical vertebrae [particularly given that a possible hyoid bone was reported (Wilkinson 1997: 615, Table B. 1, no. 19)]; (2) the omission in describing the changes in bony tissue that would be expected from their weathering (cracking, exfoliation, and sun bleaching); (3) the incongruity that 4 small drilled holes (Spencer 1982: 238) in fragments of only 4 of the 61 skulls were done directly on decapitated heads, with the endocranial diameter of the perforations larger than the ectocranial diameter (Wilkinson 1997: 619) [the said diameters imply that the perforations went from inside to outside, rather than the reverse!]; (4) the incoherence that 2 of the skulls with evidence of smoking would have been exposed to a low-intensity fire when they were displayed in the skull rack without there being evidence of an in situ bonfire; and (5) the presence of a single posthole for the “palisade” in an excavated area of 12 m2 without being able to rule out that the posthole could have been a later intrusion. Other authors have also questioned the interpretation and dating of this deposit of skulls (Braniff and Hers 1998: 66, note 22; Blomster 2011: 128).
- 12.
- 13.
One of these cut maxillae comes from a surface collection in the SW corner of Plaza II at Cerro Tilcajete and may date between 100 BC and AD 200. It consists of the incomplete left maxillary bone of a young adult individual or indeterminate sex, with postmortem tooth loss (although some root fragments were still in the alveoli) (Duncan et al. 2009: 107). The other cut left maxilla, from a middle-aged adult of indeterminate sex, also exhibits postmortem tooth loss except for the root of the central incisor, which is still in the alveolus. The bone shows a transverse cut slightly below the level of the anterior nasal spine and – in contrast to the Teotihuacan examples – has no evidence of a vertical cut on the posterior end of the pyramidal process or an enlargement of the greater palatine foramen to facilitate its suspension. The cut maxilla was found among the remains of an infant between 1 and 3 years old from the last of four superimposed domestic units excavated in Lambityeco’s Mound 91 (Urcid 1983: 31 [note 20], 126–128 and 157 [note 41]). Its context excludes the possibility of a maxilla used as a pendant to a rope collar, and certainly as a “war trophy,” opening the possibility that the modification of these anatomical parts may have had another purpose.
- 14.
However, Fray Toribio Motolinia (1969 [1565]: 42) provides a passage on ritual and sacrificial practices in southern Puebla (Tehuacan and Coxcatlán) and northwestern Oaxaca (Teotitlán del Camino), which implies the custom of shrinking heads, referring to drying as the procedure to cure and shrink them.
- 15.
Translated by the author, emphasis added
- 16.
This data contradicts the textual quotation given above, where it is mentioned that the origin of the victims of sacrifice for the feast of tlacaxipehualiztli was exogenous and not endogenous to the community and resulted from the capture of prisoners of war.
- 17.
The Relación Geográfica of Acolman, in the basin of Mexico, also describes how “the sacrificial victim was hit with thin sticks until the skin was lifted” (cited in López Austin 1996 [I]: 435).
- 18.
According to Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (2000 [1577]: 139), during the festivities of tozoztontli, the skin of the flayed victims “were thrown into an opening, in the temple called Yopico,” and 20 days later the owners of the sacrificed captives returned to that opening to once again put on the skins.
- 19.
The concavity of the worked cranial bones found at Tomaltepec (unidentified by Whalen) and San José Mogote (unidentified by Flannery and Marcus, but clearly a frontal bone) does not necessarily mean that they were used as “cups,” “shallow saucers,” “bowls,” or “vessels” (Whalen 1981: 98; Flannery and Marcus 2005: 357–358, and 490).
- 20.
Diego de Landa (1975: 123) mentions that in Yucatán, “… after the victory they took the jaws off the dead bodies [of warriors] and with the flesh cleaned off, they put them on their arms.” This quote implies that among the Maya, this treatment of mandibles was not related to human sacrifice.
- 21.
The earliest known notched bone from Oaxaca (a fragment of long bone without taxonomic and anatomical identification), dating between 100 BC–AD 200, was found at the entrance of the inner room in temple 35 at San José Mogote (Flannery and Marcus 2015: 259 and 261). In Mitla, an incomplete notched human femoral diaphysis was found in a late mortuary context (Caso and de la Borbolla 1936: 10).
- 22.
Sánchez Santiago and de León (2014) provide the reasoning for calling these instruments “rubbing idiophones” rather than “bone rasps” and found in Córdova’s vocabulary Zapotec terms that seemingly refer to notched bones: Quègo xìlla (Vueso que tañian antiguamente en sus bayles [bone played in antiquity in their dances]) and Quègo xòno, quèco-xìlla-xòne (Vueso otro assi como sierra [another bone like a saw]).
- 23.
The assumptions that rubbing idiophones made of human bones were used as the omichicahuaztlis described by Alvarado Tezozomoc and that they could have originated from sacrificed captives are not shared by all scholars (see McVicker 2005). It is also important to mention that a mosaic decorated splanchnocranium of unknown origin and now in the British Museum (see Pasztory 1983: 268, Plate 63) provides evidence of another kind of modification that might result from a treatment similar to that described by Landa (1975: 131). The friar mentions that “they used to cut off the heads of the old lords of Cocom, when they died, and after cooking them they cleaned off the flesh, and then sawed off the crown on the back, leaving the front part with the jaws and teeth. Then they replace the flesh which was gone from these half-skulls by a kind of bitumen, and gave them a perfect appearance characteristic of those whose skulls they were.”
- 24.
Undoubtedly, pre-sacrificial rituals such as gladiatorial combat and bleeding by darting or arrow shooting had many semantic values, but from a physiological point of view, they would have increased the victim’s heart rate, blood pressure, and physical weakening, which in turn facilitated the extraction of the heart and produced a copious spill of blood during the sacrificial climax.
- 25.
Furthermore, the assumption that deposits with burned and/or smoked human bones can only imply cannibalism is naïve, as the preparation of human flesh and/or organs for consumption may not necessarily involve bony parts. The burning of a person alive could represent instances of capital punishment of criminals and offenders, the treatment of dissidents, purposeful actions of martyrdom, or even accidental death by fire, not to mention the burning of a dead corpse or of exhumed dried bones to mark culturally constructed changes in the status of the deceased.
- 26.
The work of González and Javier (2010) demonstrates the promotional aspect at the individual and group level (calpulli) – which implies social differentiation – in the context of the sacrifices executed during the feast of tlacaxipehualiztli.
- 27.
Méndez (1986b: 15 and 16) reports having found the bones of an individual in tomb 5 of Cerro de la Campana – the largest and more lavishly decorated crypt known thus far in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca – immediately behind and leaning against the large tombstone that sealed its entrance, “which, based on the analysis of the available features in the interior of the tomb, we infer had to be buried alive.” This interpretation – which attempts to account for the fragmented condition of the few offerings in the tomb as the result of an act of desperation by the victim that was buried alive – is not based on osteological analysis and runs against the lexicographical expressions documented by Córdova, who explicitly mentions the death of the victim before being buried. In addition, such an interpretation would imply that the skeleton was in anatomical position, something that is not apparent in a photograph of the tomb entrance (Méndez n.d.: Fig. 3).
- 28.
A passage in a Chinantec version of the story of the creation of the Sun and the Moon includes the trope of an eagle that kidnaps and eats children that is also present in other accounts. Alicia Barabas (2003: 93) considers that “the episode can be read as a metaphor of a new cycle of the world, which cancels the sacrificial practice of the initial dark time.” This interpretation does not oppose the present exegesis on the reinstatement of another sacrificial paradigm by the twins. As Michael Lambek (2007: 27) comments, sacrifice can be conceived as an example of “beginnings,” that is, starting points that eventually lead to reinitiations.
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Urcid, J. (2024). Bodily Transformation and Sacralization: Human Sacrifice in Southwestern Mesoamerica. In: Mendoza, R.G., Hansen, L. (eds) Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica. Conflict, Environment, and Social Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36600-0_10
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