(via Loyola University New Orleans)
Loyola University New Orleans University will be hosting a presentation this Wednesday, Feb. 17 that will use data collected during more than 25 years of excavation and analysis of sacrificial sites on the north coast of Peru. The lecture will be by Ph.D. John Verano of the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University, and admission and parking on campus is free to the public.
The lecture will take place from 8 to 9 p.m. in Thomas Hall at Loyola New Orleans University, located on 6363 St. Charles Avenue. The event is co-sponsored by Loyola University New Orleans’ Office of the Provost and Department of Classical Studies, as well as the New Orleans Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.
For more information, contact Connie Rodriguez at rodrigue@loyno.edu, or see the full announcement from Loyola University New Orleans below:
“A number of discoveries of human sacrifices have been made in northern coastal Peru over the past decade. Nearly every new case calls into question previous models that have attempted to characterize and interpret ritual killing in Pre-Columbian Peru. With this growing sample we are seeing increasing variability in the demographic profile of victims, the ways in which they were sacrificed, and the location and manner in which their bodies were buried. Dividing lines between traditional categories such as executed captives, retainer and dedicatory burials, and ritual offerings are becoming blurred as new discoveries are made. Careful contextual and bioarchaeological examination of these assemblages is required if we are to make some sense of this growing corpus of data.
This presentation will draw on data collected during more than twenty five years of excavation and analysis of sacrificial sites on the north coast of Peru. While some contexts include only small numbers of victims, others involve more than a hundred individuals. One such sacrificial site at which excavation was recently conducted is the largest child and camelid sacrifice known from the New World. Made by the Chimú State about six hundred years ago, it provides a unique window into a previously unknown form of mass offering,. The ways in which it is similar to other north coast sacrifices and the ways in which it is unique will be explored, with a focus on new analytical methods in stable isotope geochemistry and ancient DNA analysis that may provide insight into the identities and origins of the sacrificial victims.”
