Sacrifice: Animals and Other Foods

K'ex - substitute or exchange - is central to modern Maya religious philoso­phy. For example, among the modern Tzotzil, ritual specialists are known as k'exoliletik and are literally the ‘substitutes' for the ancestral gods in terms of the positions they hold and the duties they fulfil.

The notion that animals may be used in sacrificial exchange relates directly to how the Maya perceive human souls. Although the specifics of belief vary across time and space, the Maya generally understand humans to be inhab­ited by an assemblage of essences (or co-essences). These essences serve as the vital, animate forces of life and help define individual character. Illness and even death may occur when malevolent spirits capture and consume human co-essences. Although ancient Maya understandings of the soul are murky, there is good evidence that they also recognised the existence of co­essences, including a class of spirit beings known as way (a term that is still used by some Mayan speakers today) which are one of the primary subjects on Maya polychrome vases.

consult Elayne Zorn, ‘Dangerous Encounters: Ritual Battles in Andean Bolivia', in D. E. Jones (ed.), Combat, Ritual, and Performance: Anthropology of the Martial Arts (Westport: Praeger, 2002), pp. 120-52.

22 For the first exploration ofk'ex sacrifice as applied to the ancient Maya see Karl A. Taube, ‘The Birth Vase: Natal Imagery in Ancient Maya Myth and Ritual', inJ. Kerr (ed.), The Maya Vase Book, vol. iv (New York: Kerr Associates, 1994), pp. 650-85. For modern k'ex sacrifice see Vogt, Tortillas for the Gods, p. 92 and Evon Z. Vogt, ‘Zinacanteco “Souls”', Man 65 (1965), 34.

parts and so it seems likely that some of the offerings made by the ancient Maya were similarly intended to appease malevolent way and other super­natural beings.^[1007]

Although chickens are the favoured animal offering today, these birds were introduced during Post-Columbian times. Spanish chroniclers report the offering of small birds - particularly quail - among the Aztecs at the time of the conquest. In the Classic period, birds are frequently found in ritual offerings, both inside royal tombs and in cache vessels associated with ritual structures. The most common bird in such offerings at Maya sites is the bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus). Although we do not know why birds were favoured as sacrificial offerings, it could be that these birds, like chickens today, were seen as appropriate substitutes for the human soul. Indeed, depictions of the flowery paradise of the Classic Maya afterworld consistently include depictions of small birds. With their capability of flight, birds may also have been seen as appropriate emissaries to otherworld places.

Along with birds, early Spanish chroniclers report that a wide variety of animals were sacrificed, including dogs, peccaries and fish. Animal offerings are reported to have been made both raw and cooked. The Late Preclassic murals from San Bartolo, Guatemala, show three braziers, each respectively laden with a fish, a deer and an oscillated turkey. Each animal represents a particular domain - water, earth or sky - and these environmental relationships are reinforced by associated symbolism (e.g., water below the brazier of the fish). These three animals are also among the preferred food­stuffs of the Maya. The San Bartolo murals then reinforce the alimentary nature of Maya sacrifice, while suggesting that the animals chosen were metaphors for other dimensions of Maya spirituality.^[1009]

Beyond animals the Spanish chroniclers also report offerings of bread, drink and other foods. Even today, maize breads are made as offerings to the supernatural. The best evidence for such offerings in ancient times are the ceramic vessels placed within many Maya graves and in cache deposits, such as those that contain the remains of birds as noted above. Ceramic vessels were widely used in bloodletting rites not merely as convenient containers but to underscore that the offerings made were comestibles for otherworldly spirits. Indeed, this was also true of the cached fingers and teeth noted above. Moreover, ceramic vessels are understood to have operated as portals to otherworldly places in Pre-Columbian times.^[1010]