Open Chests and Broken Hearts Ritual Sequences and Meanings of Human Heart Sacrifice in Mesoamerica

摘要

Beyond the general idea of benefiting society and placating the divine, the polyvalent symbols and meanings of ancient religious sacrifices can be interpreted properly only after combining different disciplinary lenses. In this paper, we systematically scrutinize iconographic and ethnohistorical testimonies together with new skeletal and forensic evidence from across the Mesoamerican landscape in order to survey Mesoamerican heart sacrifices. Here we focus on three different heart-extraction procedures, two of which are characterized for the first time. Each reconstructed method (i.e., from below the chest cavity, between two left ribs, and through the sternal bone) provides novel cues regarding the array of ceremonial devices and native concepts of the human body as a cosmic model. Its partitioning and the liberation of vitalizing matter (namely, the heart and blood) fed specific sacred forces during divine cult and mythic reenactment. As for the Aztecs, we conclude that different trunk-opening procedures were practiced as part of ritual sequences that in each case enabled access to the Cosmic Sacred Mountain with its vivifying essences. In this context, native conceptions surrounding the distinctive heart-extraction techniques pose new proxies for analogous sacrificial practices in other parts of the world still awaiting systematic scrutiny.