Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ritual Violence and Related Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica: Beyond the Maya

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

Tiesler, Vera

Paperback

Series: International, Book 3263

AnthropologyArchaeology

ISBN10: 1407362550
ISBN13: 9781407362557
Publisher: British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd
Published: Mar 31 2026
Pages: 440
Weight: 3.11
Height: 1.20 Width: 8.27 Depth: 11.69
Language: English

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.

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