Ritual Violence and Related Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica: Beyond the Maya

Ancient Mesoamericans deemed ritual violence a crucial form of merit-making with the divine. Until recently, humans themselves were considered supreme "food staples". Their bodies could vitalize the cosmos at the pulse of consecrated time intervals. Individuals were prepared and sacrificed in prescribed ways to liberate their animate essences, believed to be harboured mainly in a person's heart and blood. Although ritualized violence is abundantly recorded in iconography and has been inferred from simultaneous multiple interments and deposits of articulated body segments, only the last two decades of scholarship have seen important strides towards layered, nuanced, and interdisciplinary explorations of sacrificial practices. This study examines old and new, archaeological, graphic, and forensic evidence across the Mesoamerican landscapes focusing on all types of violence and associated body processing - from community activity to political terror.