A gruesome discovery first came to light in winter 2007 in looters holes at an excavation site in Lake Xaltocan, a drained lake in the northern basin of Mexico where Georgia State University’s Christopher Morehart and his wife were studying ancient agricultural technologies and how people interacted with their environment.
Tzompantli or skull rack at the Templo Mayor museum in Mexico City Image: Wikimedia Commons, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0
An unexpected find
What they had found was unexpected and has led to some startling speculation. Up to 200 severed heads were located in ghoulish rows at what would have been a small, unremarkable shrine in an agricultural setting, rather than the more typical, if no less disturbing, larger temple complexes.
“My wife and I were noticing that they were cranial material,” Morehart recounted the initial moments of discovery. “She put her hand in the dirt, felt like she had a big shard, and it was the entire frontal of a cranium. My very easy, straightforward agricultural study just took a turn to being a more complex study.”
Christopher Morehart (left), assistant professor of anthropology, leads an excavation at a site of human sacrifice in Mexico.
Morehart, with fellow researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the support of the National Geographic Society , has been working at the Xaltocan site ever since this 2007 discovery to learn more about the location where human sacrifice took place.
Further excavation from that initial research revealed at least 31 individuals had been sacrificed, with their skulls lined up toward the east.
A time of sacrifice and war
It is clear that these people had been sacrificed and decapitated at a time between AD 660 and 890. This coincided with the collapse of nearby Teotihuacan and the later rise of the Aztec, known as the Epiclassic period.
Among the important markers of this period is evidence for the “collapse” of Classic Maya culture in the southern lowlands, including frequent images of warfare and sacrifice.
Human sacrifice took place throughout the region during that period, both at Teotihuacan and in the later Aztec Empire, but most of those rituals happened at great pyramids within cities and were tied to state powers.
The researchers found figures similar to deities worshipped in the region, such as Tlaloc , the god of rain and water, buried with the skulls.
“There was a ritual going on where offerings were being given to gods associated with the Earth, gods associated with rain and also integrating human sacrifice, which at the same time has connotations of violence, conflict and warfare,” Morehart said.
Some of the skulls had been purposely flattened or elongated while the victims were children – an ancient ritual known as cranial deformation while others were found with finger bones inserted into the eye sockets but the significance of this remains unknown.
Christopher Morehart, said that so far, between 150 and 200 adult skulls – which were carefully arranged in rows facing east towards the rising sun – had been excavated from fields that stand on a former lake bed.
Physical anthropologist Abigail Meza Penaloza of the Institute of Anthropology at Mexico’s National University said her team was still cleaning and assembling the skulls, but had a confirmed count of 130 so far, all of which appear to be of adult males.
Ms Meza Penaloza said it was the first find of its kind, both because of the location – a small, artificial mound built in the middle of an agricultural field – and the kind of decapitations carried out there. She said mass sacrifices had been documented at temple inaugurations of temple closings, but never in the middle of fields.
Artefact depicting the Pre-Columbian water god Tlaloc, found at the human sacrifice site at Lake Xaltocan, Mexico. Image: Christopher Morehart
The researchers found pollen that has been connected to both ceremonially significant flowers and the burning of incense. They have found that people continued to conduct rituals at the spot even after the period of sacrifices.
As later and different peoples arrived in the area, they most likely recognized the sacred significance of the site. They did not continue human sacrifice, but performed rituals and even directed a major canal right through the shrine.
Even today, it’s a site of ritual as Morehart’s team found evidence of contemporary rituals such as burying “spell bags” at the site in 2012.
“It’s a fascinating area in terms of long-term continuity and ritual, and it fits very well into my interests into understanding how people interact with their environment in multiple ways,” Morehart said. “This provides us with insight into how religion and practices are also relevant in understanding how people interact with their environment.”
During 2012, Morehart used the support of a National Geographic Society grant to dig further, finding even more skulls that are still under analysis by researchers at UNAM.
Depiction of a tzompantli (“skull rack”), right half of image; associated with the depiction of Aztec temple dedicated to the deity Huitzilopochtli. From the 1587 Aztec manuscript, the Codex Tovar. Image: Wikimedia Commons, used under a CC BY-SA 3.0
Source: Georgia State University
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