The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council’s generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947). This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings.
Bridging a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, daring us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by considering the oft hidden, subliminal and even paradoxical values and motivations that underlie sacrificial acts. The chapters give needed attention to pivotal questions in studies of sacrifice and ritualized violence – such as how we might employ new approaches to the existing evidence or revise long-debated theories about what exactly ‘human sacrifice’ is or might be, or why human sacrifice seems to emerge so often and so easily in human social experience across time and in vastly different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, the volume will strike a chord with scholars of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, religious studies, political science and economics – wherever interest is focused on critically rethinking questions of sacred and sanctified human violence, and the values that make it what it is.
Table of Contents:
Foreword 1. Introduction: Introducing Sacrificial Values Part I: Observing Sacrificial Logics and Social Values 2. Some Human Sacrifices in Mongolia and Their Rationales 3. CEO Dismissal as an Act of Human Sacrifice: Metaphor or Reality? 4. The Economy of Sacrifice: Christ, Coins and the Eucharist in the Middle Ages Part II: Reading Logics and Values From Archaeology 5. Competitive Violence and Ruling Elites in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia 6. Human Sacrifice in Ancient Near Eastern Societies 7. The Social Context of Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt 8. Funerary Dramas and Ritual Killing in the Slavic World: Written Sources and Archaeological Realities 9. From Brave Warriors to Innocent Children: Understanding the Foundations of Ritual Violence in the Moche Valley, North Coast of Peru, 200–1450 A.D. 10. Human Sacrifices at Huaca Pucllana in Lima, Peru 11. Making an Impact: Ritual Public Goods and the Emergence of Retainer Sacrifice in an Early State of Korea 12. Ritual Killings as Resource Complex in the Viking Age Funeral Ceremony Part III: Reading Transitions in Value Through Exegesis, Ethnology and Critical Synthesis 13. Sacrifice in Contemporary Vernacular and Ancient Ritual Texts 14. Aztec Sacrificial Celebrations as Entertainment? The Physiological and Social Psychological Rewards Attending Aztec Human Sacrifice 15. Human Sacrifice as Social Control Through Terror 16. From Sacrificed Humans to Self-Sacrificing Humans: A Longue-Durée Bio-Cultural Evolutionary Perspective on Human Sacrifice Index
About the Author :
Matthew J. Walsh is Senior Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sean O’Neill is Research Counsel in the Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.
Marianne Moen is Head of Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.
Eva-Johanna Marie Lafuente Nilsson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.
Svein H. Gullbekk is Professor in the Section for Numismatics and Classical Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.
