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An Inka Mummy from Chuscha Mountain (Northwest Argentina): Preliminary Research ResultsEighty years ago, residents of the region between the provinces of Salta and Catamarca recovered a well-preserved body from a plateau located just below the peak of the mountain of Chuscha, which has an altitude of 5400 meters above sea level. This find was transported to the Museum of Natural Sciences and Anthropology of Mendoza for the purpose of undertaking an interdisciplinary study. The physical anthropological analysis determined that the body represented a young girl of approximately eight years of age. The child, who was dressed in typical Inca style, was the principal object of a ritual sacrifice. Her death was caused by a lance that pierced her thorax. This form of sacrifice of individual victims is unusual, although there have not been many other examples of high altitude mummies recovered to date. Two exploratory expeditions to the region added some information concerning Inca domination in this region, which has only recently been the focus of archaeological investigations. / Ochenta años atrás, lugareños de la zona entre las provincias de Salta y Catamarca extrajeron un cuerpo bien conservado de una meseta ubicada al pie de la cumbre del nevado de Chuscha, cuya altura es de 5400 metros. Este hallazgo fue llevado al Museo de Ciencias Naturales y Antropológicas de Mendoza con el fin de proceder a su estudio interdisciplinario. El análisis de antropología física determinó que se trataba de un individuo femenino de ocho años de edad, aproximadamente. El infante vestía un ajuar de típico estilo Inca y fue el personaje principal de un sacrificio ritual. Su muerte fue ocasionada al arrojársele una lanza que le atravesó el tórax. Este modo de sacrificar a los individuos es extraño, pues no se han encontrado casos similares para momias de altura. Dos expediciones proporcionaron algunos datos sobre la dominación inca en esta región, a la que recién se ha comenzado a estudiar arqueológicamente.

In the ancient religious imagination, catastrophic events – plagues, droughts, natural disasters – were frequently seen as manifestations of divine wrath that necessitated extraordinary ritual responses to quell. These responses frequently consisted in intensified forms of sacred violence, the most extreme of which was human sacrifice. The corpus of Greek literature is rife with myths of human sacrifice. In spite of this rich mythic repertoire, Greek artists produced scenes of human sacrifice rather infrequently and drew upon an extremely restricted range of subjects. The extant corpus of human sacrificial images totals fewer than 50 specimens and almost all of them feature the maidens Polyxena or Iphigeneia as the victim. In the Archaic era (700-480 BCE), painters and sculptors were almost exclusively interested in the sacrificial fate of Polyxena. Archaic representations of Polyxena’s sacrifice are remarkable for their overt treatment of the physical violence to which the maiden was subjected, in some cases going so far as to visualize the blood gushing forth from her perforated neck. Interest in the violent and gory aspect of the sacrificial ritual diminishes in the closing decades of the Archaic period. The title of the proposed talk, bad blood, has a twofold sense; both senses refer to the underlying subject of belief and to the main arguments of this paper: The first sense is idiomatic and indicative: Polyxena’s sacrifice was a matter of bad blood, since it resulted from the need to placate the wroth and aggrieved ghost of Achilles, who denied the Greeks safe passage home until he was granted the spoils due to him (cf. Eur. Hek. 35-44; Quint. Smyr 14.324-338). The second, more literal sense is interrogative: To wit, was the shedding of Polyxena’s blood bad per se? While Greek authors of the Classical period and beyond suggest that human sacrifice was universally condemned as an unthinkably barbaric offense and a violation of ritual norms, earlier extant literary sources offer no such clear ruling. However, this situation changes when the small yet iconographically remarkable group of pre-Classical visual representations of human sacrifice are considered. In these images, one may detect a diversity of attitudes or positions on the ritual of human sacrifice, individual as well as collective, that range from acceptance to outright repudiation. This range of attitudes is not, however, neatly confined to the proverbial frame of the image or the mythical context of the event. Like the mythic cast of characters, contemporary ancient viewers were meant to participate in the discursive dynamic, bringing their individual beliefs and attitudes to bear on the scene and its significance. In other words, these representations imply a multiplicity of attitudes (and the beliefs that inform them) among the implied viewers of these artworks.

Chosen of the Gods: Identity and Status in the Sacrificial Victims from the Llullaillaco VolcanoMummified children recovered from the summit of Llullaillaco volcano, in the Andes of Argentina, are an outstanding example of archaeological visibility of social actors, whose faces remain almost perfectly preserved half a millenium after their burial. The extraordinary preservation of the bioanthropological evidence from the Llullaillaco volcano has allowed scholars to undertake an archaeological approach towards topics such as social identity and status among the sacrificial victims in the Inca Empire. Interdisciplinary research on the frozen bodies of the young woman and the two infants from Llullaillaco, including Paleoradiological techniques (x-rays and cat-scans), Odontological studies, Paleopathological examination, DNA and hair analysis, has provided scientists with tangible results, that can be cross-checked with the information presented by the historical sources in relation to the sex and gender profile, physical beauty and social and ethnic origin of the children that the Inca priests would select as messengers into the world of the gods. / Los niños momificados recuperados de la cima del volcán Llullaillaco, en los Andes de Argentina, constituyen un ejemplo pocas veces igualado de la visibilidad arqueológica de actores sociales, ya que sus rostros se encuentran casi perfectamente preservados desde el momento de su muerte, hace más de medio milenio. La extraordinaria conservación de la evidencia bioantropológica del Llullaillaco ha permitido abordar temas relativos a la identidad y estatus social de las víctimas sacrificiales en el imperio inca. Los estudios interdisciplinarios en los cuerpos congelados de la doncella y los niños del Llullaillaco —que involucraron técnicas de paleoradiología (radiografías y tomografías computarizadas), estudios de odontología antropológica, exámenes de paleopatología, estudios de ADN antiguo y análisis de cabello— han provisto a los científicos de resultados tangibles para contrastar los requisitos de perfil sexo-etario, belleza física y extracción social que las fuentes históricas refieren en torno a la selección que los sacerdotes incas efectuaban de los mensajeros para el mundo de los dioses.