Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East

by Anne Porter (Editor), Glenn M. Schwarz (Editor)

What is sacrifice? How can we identify it in the archaeological record? And what does it tell us about the societies that practice it? Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East investigates these and other questions through the evidence for human and animal sacrifice in the Near East from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic periods. Drawing on sociocultural anthropology and history in addition to archaeology, the book also includes evidence from ancient China and a riveting eyewitness account and analysis of sacrifice in contemporary India, which engage some of the key issues at stake. Sacred Killing vividly presents a variety of methods and theories in the study of one of the most profound and disturbing ritual activities humans have ever practiced.

Genres: History

328 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great selection of essays, well-written introduction. Offers a variety of perspectives on the complexity of human sacrifice. Highly recommend to anyone with a stomach for traditional, thesis-driven history.

[Sarah Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any collection of essays, this book is a mixed bag. I think the biggest problem is that the subtitle is a mismatch to the book itself; once you include essays about modern Indian goat sacrifice and Shang dynasty China, we're not really talking about sacrifice in the ancient middle east are we? My big takeaway from reading this book is that archeology is fine at finding the "what" but the "why" is mostly speculation. Really, in the case of iron clad proof that many of the examples of human sacrifice given are indeed sacrifices, there is none. There is so much room for interpretation in this field of study. I also find it intriguing that many of the explanations for possible motivation given in the book would absolutely not be the reasons given by the actual sacrificers themselves. Even if, for example, Jill a. Weber is correct that the (potential I'm not convinced they even are sacrifices) human and equid sacrifices in Umm el-Marta were tools to establish legitimacy to the newly developing social stratification and elite ruling class, that's certainly not how people at the time would have explained themselves, and ultimately I agree with Ann Porter, why the use human sacrifice as the vehicle for expressing power and legitimacy in the first place can only be explained by cultural understandings of cosmology. At any rate, it is my opinion that archeologists would do well to leave the speculation of the "why" out of their conclusions.