RECONTEXTUALIZATION OF ICONOGRAPHIC SCENES OF HUMAN SACRIFICE LINKED WITH CONDORS

(In charge: Curator of Ceramics)

The main objective is to determine the similarities and interactions of ceremonies of ritual sacrifice during the Early Intermediate and Middle Horizon in the Central Andes.

In 1998 Dante Casareto, during his excavations in the archaeological site of Cajamarquilla, found a ritual context in the Tello group where there was an individual who had been offered in association with a condor, camelids and fragmented vessels.
 



The principal personage has his arms tied behind him with a sling or huaraca. He seems to have been executed with a blow directly to the face and very close to him is found the complete skeleton of a condor, inside a folded and plucked matrix. Underneath its skull was found a ceramics fragment, which turned out to belong to a large vessel which was deliberately broken; some of the fragments from this same vessel were found in small piles on the floor with bony remains of camelids, which had been sacrificed during the ritual interment of large chambers to create a huge recessed plaza.

In the Department of Ceramics there are several vessels from different cultures which depict various scenes of human sacrifice that include condors.