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Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes: Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru

2017; Duke University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3933928

1527-1900

Susan Elizabeth Ramírez,

Latin American history and culture

This edited volume is a serious, even pathbreaking, treatment of what, from our temporal and cultural vantage point, are often horrendous practices, worthy of a television series like Criminal Minds. The ritual violence of sacrifice explored in 15 separate chapters includes exsanguination, strangulation, slaying, butchering, possible poisoning, live burial, heart ablation, defleshing, dismemberment, forced joint relocation, recycling of body parts, trophy acquisition, possible flaying, and the surface exposure of dead bodies and their subsequent decomposition. Belying the seeming brutality is the sobering realization that ancient peoples engaged in such practices often, but not always, as part of the veneration and supplication of their ancestors and other supernatural forces in sacred spaces.Collectively, the authors cover the Moche, Sican, Chimu, and Inca cultures, with a few mentions back to the Wari and a few remarks forward to Spanish colonial times and practices. For this long time period the authors focus on the north coast of Peru, from the La Leche valley south to the Huarmey valley. Most chapters treat humans, animals, and objects as offering sacrifices, foundation sacrifices, and retainer sacrifices in protracted liturgies that established the interaction between the living and the dead. The exception is the chapter on the execution of captured warriors.Of specific interest to historians are findings that human sacrifice was not a state monopoly. Local peoples' ritual activities mirrored state ceremonies but were celebrated on a smaller, less elaborate scale. The multiple authors of chapter 6 find that some local ceremonial activities remained unchanged by Chimu and Inca domination, although the authors note that the Inca increased violence and mutilation as well as the number of female and child victims. Such practices suggest a widespread, embedded, and ritually reinforced ideology that persisted through time. In chapter 7, the results of analytical tests on human remains are presented that indicate that lower-class, marginalized populations from various locations were more prone to be chosen for ritual murder. Recent technological advances, discussed in chapter 8, are even able to reveal how some victims lived before death. The two authors of chapter 9 studied skeletal remains at Tucume and conclude that victims were between the ages of 4 and 45, with the largest group consisting of young adult males. The victims had lived more stressful lives and were from a lower socioeconomic group than the local population. Such sacrifices contrast with those found at the Pyramids of Moche, in which over 100 warrior captives, some with fractures and other traumatic wounds, were executed. Their bound hands and ankles, ropes about their necks, age (from 15 to 35 years old), male gender, unburied remains, and nakedness indicated their status. Half were nonlocal (based on their nonmarine diet). Finally, the date of this mass execution coincided with the Chimu conquest. This group contrasts with another of 200 mostly young males who were bound, blindfolded, and left unburied in Huarmey at about the time of the Chimu conquest of that valley. A few children and elderly were found with them. Such data suggest that these represented reprisal or retaliatory killings meant to terrorize and humiliate in order to aid, ironically, in future pacification. These seem to show the danger to civilian populations in an age of an expansionist state.Chapter 10 discusses retainers in high-status tombs. The authors' analysis finds that some retainers were close kin to the deceased. Although not always incontrovertible, some evidence suggests sequential interments that might have been accumulated for later burial when an authority died. Linked to this analysis is chapter 11, on San José de Moro, which features information on tomb building. Of particular interest were some below-the-surface chambers with adobe walls that held up a roof, creating a “house for the dead,” that could be reopened and revisited and that often contained several individuals and multiple grave goods, such as ceramic pots, camelids, architectural models, metal, and other objects (p. 297). Two additional chapters cover the sacrifice of animals and objects, the latter often disfigured, broken, or otherwise destroyed or obliterated.Throughout, the level of detail is impressive. Besides determining the age and gender of the dead, new techniques distinguished locals from foreigners, identified the marginalized, outlined lifestyles, and determined whether the dead served as warriors. Such information complements what can be learned from the post-1532 colonial written record. But my lament after reading this book is that more is not made of these published and easily accessed records. No reference is made to the calpa ceremony, in which a camelid is sacrificed for divination purposes; no mention is made of the local funeral practices described by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, for example, in which relatives carried the deceased about to visit his or her favorite places and feted him or her for five days before interment with other family members. The dead could be periodically removed from their tombs, dressed again, and feasted. Nor do the authors address the idolatry records, like those published by Laura Larco (for the north coast) and by Pierre Duviols, Ana Sánchez, Mario Polia, and others (mostly for the nearby highlands). Such interdisciplinary integration could deepen our understanding of the meanings and motivations behind these north coast practices and their remains.