MEXICO CITY.- A new English-language volume is bringing together some of the latest archaeological research on ritual violence, human sacrifice and ceremonial treatment of the body in ancient Mesoamerica, combining new scientific methods with an effort to understand these practices within the belief systems of the societies that carried them out.
Ritual Violence and Related Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica, published by British Archaeological Reports, was recently presented at Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology. Edited by archaeologist Vera Tiesler, the book gathers contributions from 36 researchers working across a wide range of disciplines and institutions, including Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.
For Tiesler, one of the volume’s principal goals is to make recent research more accessible to an English-speaking academic audience while widening the geographical and chronological scope of earlier work on the subject.
A previous volume she co-authored with Andrea Cucina in 2007 focused on human sacrifice and ritual treatment of the body in ancient Maya society. The new publication moves beyond that framework, considering different periods, religious traditions and civilizations throughout Mesoamerica.
The result is an 18-chapter study that combines archaeological evidence with archaeometry, archaeothanatology, isotope analysis and paleogenetics. Rather than treating ritual violence only through modern categories, the contributors attempt to interpret discoveries within the cultural and religious systems of the pre-Hispanic world.
That approach has become increasingly important as major discoveries over the past two decades have reshaped understanding of ceremonial violence in Mesoamerica. Among the sites discussed are the Huei Tzompantli in Tenochtitlan, Uxul in Campeche, Tikal in Guatemala, El Zapotal in Veracruz, Teotihuacan in the State of Mexico, Tonin in Chiapas and Chichn Itz in Yucatn.
One of the book’s most striking examples moves beyond sacrifice itself to the practice of ritual bloodletting.
Researchers studying two animal-bone awls from the tomb of Lady K’ab’al Xook of Yaxchiln, the principal wife of the Maya ruler Itzamnaaj B’ahlam, identified reddish-brown areas on the tools. Scanning electron microscopy indicated that the material included well-preserved blood cells.
The finding is especially significant because it corresponds with Maya imagery showing K’ab’al Xook participating in ritual bloodletting. One of the best-known examples is Lintel 24 from Yaxchiln, in which she is depicted carrying out a ceremonial act of self-sacrifice.
Tiesler described the discovery as an example of how archaeometric methods can reveal forms of ritual behavior that might otherwise remain difficult to detect in the archaeological record.
The volume also revisits the Huei Tzompantli, the monumental skull display associated with the ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan.
Researchers from INAH’s Urban Archaeology Program analyzed 214 skulls recovered from the structure, which was in use between 1428 and 1521. Young adults between the ages of 15 and 29 accounted for 64 percent of the individuals studied. The sample included 46.3 percent men, 37.4 percent women and 8.4 percent infants.
Those figures complicate a long-standing image of the Huei Tzompantli as a monument composed exclusively of captured male warriors.
According to archaeologist Lorena Vzquez Valln, the presence of women and children suggests that sacrificial victims came from a broader range of social groups and that women may have held an important place within ritual practices.
That evidence, she noted, requires scholars to reconsider not only the identities of those sacrificed in ceremonies associated with Huitzilopochtli, but also traditional assumptions about what constituted a “warrior” or “combatant” in Mexica society.
Taken together, the studies in Ritual Violence and Related Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica reflect a broader change in the archaeology of ritual violence. New laboratory methods are making it possible to extract information from bones, tools and human remains in ways that were unavailable a generation ago.
But the volume also argues that scientific precision alone is not enough. Its contributors seek to connect physical evidence with the religious, political and cultural worlds in which those practices took place, offering a more complex picture of sacrifice, self-sacrifice and the treatment of the body across ancient Mesoamerica.
