Women Sacrified in a Temple of Death

Ancient societies on Peru's north coast killed male prisoners of war and drank their blood in grisly sacrifice ceremonies. Now researchers have found an unusual twist on that scene: the remains of six young women, sacrificed in a ritual in about A.D. 850. Their bones were found under the floor of a mudbrick temple complex in Pucala, near the city of Chiclayo. The women show no signs of disease and had been wrenched into odd positions. Four lay atop each other in a single grave, and two others rested a few feet away, accompanied by a baby llama. Most are missing rib bones, indicating that their remains were left exposed and that their organs had ben eaten by vultures after death. a purification rite that the bodies of male sacrifice victims were also subjected to, says archaeologist Edgar Bracamonte of the Royal Tombs of the Sipan Museum.

 Human sacrifices were often public spectacles in ancient Peru, but not in this case. these women were buried in a ritual place which was surrounded by high walls. They were buried on a careful east-west axis. But in the Moche culture, the dead was buried on a north-south axis. In the burial of those women, their heads were towards the Andes Mountains to the east. Ceramics accompanying the women are also from the Andes, suggesting that the women and the society that buried them originated in the mountains and came to the coast by invasion or migration.