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Notions of Archaelogical Application:

Exploring the Role of Archaeology in Understanding
the Hypothetical Purpose and Motivation for Insitutionalized
Child Sacrifice in the Inca Empire

Logan A. Kirkland

Anthropology of Violence
Emanuela Guano, PhD

December 2, 2010
Georgia State University
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Each of the empires that have left a mark on history has engaged in the manipulation of her

people through the threat and execution of violence-- the Romans loved their crucifixion, the British

their drawing and quartering, the French their guillotine, and the Aztec their heart-ripping-and-

throwing-down-some-stairs act. America even does it today, from her incalcuable plethora of

financial fines to her far more macabre life-sentences and lethal injections. The Inca Empire on the

western shores and mountain ranges of South America were no different-- they ruled their vast

society with an articulate sort of violence that kept the far flung villages and peoples in order and

synthesized a great loyalty to the Emperor. One such tactical scheme, involving no less than the

sacrifice of children and teenagers, exemplifies how incredibley potent their style of imperial-order-

maintaing violence was. Indeed, this particular loyalty-securing technique worked with nothing

short of extreme charm and excellence, it seems. One might even argue that this is because people

did not only allow the the sacrifice of these young people, no, evidence actually points out that

they(both the tribal groups and the youth themselves) may have embraced this harsh fate-- even

going so far as to conceptualize it as a royal honour and a divine privalige.

Archaeology provides us with a powerful system that lends itself well to exploreing human

change in both a spatial and temporal sense. The discipline is home to a plethora tools, theories and

techniques that can allow us to interperate and understand the realities that might have been

experienced by humans in the past, and to understand changes in human behaviour as well as

human anatomy and phisiology over time. To achieve this end, Archaeology applies itself through

a tradition concerned with the recovery and analysis of the material culture left behind by past

people, including: artifacts (portable material objects manipulated by humans), ecofacts (the

remains of organic material that were resultant from human activity), and features (objects and
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structures which are immovable and fixed in location) (Price 2010: 20-21). An ancient sword would

be an artifact, while prehistoric reminents of perserved seed or grain would be an ecofact, and a

large obelisk would certainly be a feature. In addition to material culture, Archaeologists also gain

enormous insight from human material remains, which can be used to ascertain a variety of data--

from the different places in which the person lived, to how they died, to their individual status in the

community to which they belonged (Price 2010: 22). An Archaeologist specializing in the study of

organic remains (mostly human, but often also domesticated and hunted animals) is known as a

Bioarchaeologist.

The most essential aspect of any Archaeological undertaking is, however, none of these

things. It is instead the context in which all of these various material factors are preserved. Context

focuses on the relationships and associations between various objects at the same site, as well as the

relation of these things with the enviroment (Price 2010: 14-15). Without context, Archaeology can

be a difficult and almost fruitless undertaking-- to understand a piece of pottery or an ancient ritual

blade, one really needs knowledge of the spatial and temporal setting in which said object was

discovered, and by understanding this one can then begin to piece together various possible

associations between the enviroment, other objects in the area, and the object-in-focus. Context is

essential if one is to even begin to attempt reverse engineering any notions of past people and their

lives.

In this piece of writing, I will apply the metaphoric sepia-tone lens of Archaeaology to

explore notions of youth sacrifice by the Inca Empire in an attempt to understand the nature and

purpose of these violent acts of sacrifice-- be they motivated by the religious, the political, or

something more. To begin with, the Inca people and their respective empire dominated the western

coast of South America and the Andes mountains (throughout areas of present day Peru and Chile)

from some time in the early thirteenth century until the Spanish conquest of the empire lead by

Pizarro in 1533 . The empire was a highly structured and carefully engineered sociopolitical entity
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that managed to maintain and promote an intricately complex class system, filled with numerous

factions and political complications. Indeed, by the time the Spanish arrived to conquer them, the

Inca Empire had assimilated over 100 distinct cultures and within the empire more than 20

different languages were commonly spoken. The cultural dynamic between the various regions of

the empire isn't difficult to imagine--for example, a small village high in the Andes would be a far

different place than the great cities and cultural centers of the empire, such as the capital of Cusco,

or Sacsayhuaman, which would later become the site of the final battle against the Spanish. In one

these small villages, one would often find that for the most part the original structure of tribal

leadership was still in place-- they simply answered to the greater imperial authority. As with any

large empire, the threat of violence would have been essential to controlling the far-flung villages

and peoples-- and one method the Inca might have practiced unto this purpose is child sacrifice

(Anitei 2010).

While the Inca are generally considered to have been far less violent than their Aztec cousins

to the north, they still engaged in ritual human sacrifice-- particularly of children, as children were

considered to be 'pure' (Anitei 2010) and thus, due to this characteristic of divine innocence, were

highly appealing as sacrifical victims. Thus comes the Inca ritual of capacocha-- the highly

ritualalized execution of children and young teenagers, with the alleged goal of pleasing the Gods

(but perhaps to strike institutionalized fear into the populace as well). Capacocha would be

performed in times of great celebration or need (the birth of a royal child or during a famine) to,

theoretically, impress the Gods and garner their favour. Children were chosen for their physical

beauty, as a beautiful child was seen as the greatest gift one could offer the Gods (Douglass 2008).

Bioarcheological evidence has shed new light on these ancient practices of violence,

however, and this has given us a chance to revaluate the cultural processes various that might have

been involved with the sacrifice of these children. The wonders of Bioarchaeology have given us a
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plethora of organic data: the children were usually between the ages of six and fifteen. Evidence in

hair samples shows us that the children began to be 'fattened up' some time before their deaths-- at

least a year and a half in advance in many instances. They would start to be fed a maize-based diet

with a healthy dash of llama meat, instead of the more common potato-- this can be observed in the

isotopes of their hair. This shows a transition to a ceremonial 'elite' diet instead of their former

peasant one--maize was the food of the rich and powerful, while potato were a common food for

common people (Henderson 2007). This also shows that many of these children were coming from

peasant backgrounds (originally it was thought that many of them were actually from noble families

because that would 'please the gods', in theory, more efficiently), and again this raises the question

of whether these grim rituals were purely a product of indigenous religious beliefs, or whether they

also served a more imperial purpose; these sacrifices could easily have been used by the highly

imperialistic Inca to insil fear among the distant members of the empire, and through this fear, help

to facilitate sociocultural control over these peasents by the Inca (Henderson 2007).

To begin the macabre ritual, the children would be given an intoxicating beer made of

fermented corn, various hallucinogenic botanicals (most likely containing active ingredients similer

to the ayauasca potion, including: harmala; n,n,DMT; and 5-MeO-DMT) and coca leaves to induce

a stupor. At this point, the child was then usually left to die from exposure in the high mountains

(although evidence also shows that they occasionally were bludgeoned or strangled violently).

Because of the incredibly cold yet arid enviroment, the bodies of the sacrifical children at many

sites has been preserved most excellently and they thus have allowed archeologists to explore the

former lives these people lived through the archaeological window of their impeccibley preserved

remains. The remains of the Llullaillaco girl (15 years old at death) and Llullaillaco boy (12 years

old at death) both show signs of a peasant background, ritual preparation over a year in time, and

then death from exposure in the mountains. Another example, however, was bound so tightly
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around his torso with cloth and chord that it crushed his ribs and dislocated his pelvis-- diarrhea and

vomit were found all over his ancient clothes, indicating a possible struggle before hand, requiring

the extensive, and potentially agonizing, bindings (Anitei 2010).

The modern humanitarian has to ask: why? How could any people willingly allow their

children to be sacrifically murdered for any purpose? Yet, even more appaling to the modern

humanitarian, these people seemed not only to do just that, but to do it willingly, with pomp and

circumstance and as an honour. One theoretical explination postulates the possibility that the

practice was slipped into the culture under the pretense of religion-- for indeed, many other cultures

would happily gore their babies at the behest of the divine (just ask Abraham and Isaac). Imperialist

maniuplation of fear is the other enormous factor that could have been responsible for pressuring

this cultural process into becoming so easily engrained in a society-- “the empire will slaughter the

entire village if we don't give up this child”, the village elders, or perhaps the parents of the child,

might have said. True, too, it seems the children were elevated in social status enormously before

the execution-- but did they even know it was coming? Did they know what they were giving up to

eat nice corn and llama steak? These factors remain still a mystery that we can only begin to

decipher without more archaeological data.

In conclusion, Archeology has the power to show us things about the human past that

otherwise might be hidden, quite literally, beneth the sands of time. This brutal ritual is an excellent

example-- Archeology has set out to answer the question: were these Inca child sacrifices purely

religious, or did they have some underlying political nature? What kind of sociocultural practices

could even lead to this kind of institutionalized cruelty and murder in the first place? Why would

any group of sane and responsible people ever allow this, and how could so many of these children

approach this execution so peacefully—willingly, even with seeming desire? By engaging in a

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transtemporal dialouge with these ancient people through the material culture and remains that they

left behind, we can continue our quest to look for the answers to these questions, as well as

inumerable others, through the practice and application of Archaeology.

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Works Cited:

Douglass, Susan.
2008 Mummified Inca Child Sacrifices. Children and Youth in History.
Center for History and New Media.

Anitei, Stefan.
2010 Inca Human Sacrifices - Children for the Gods. Softpedia.

Henderson, Mark.
2007 Incas Fattened Up Their Children Before Sacrifice on the Volcano. The Times Online.

Price, T. Douglas, and Gary Feinman.

2010 Images of the Past. New York City: McGraw-Hill.