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Bloodletting in Ancient Central Mexico: Using Lithic Analyses to Detect Changes in Ritual Practices and Local Ontologies

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Abstract

Bloodletting was one of the most commonly shared ritual practices among ancient Mesoamerican societies. However, ethnohistoric accounts, epigraphic records, and the archaeological record demonstrate that (1) bloodletters were crafted out of different materials; (2) bloodletting was conducted using different techniques; (3) bloodletting was performed in different spaces; and (4) bloodletting could create various outcomes based on local ontologies. Consideration of these variables is crucial for the detection and interpretation of artifacts that may be linked to bloodletting rituals. Lithic analysts can detect obsidian artifacts that were likely used in bloodletting rituals through a suite of use-wear characteristics in addition to considerations of technological characteristics and archaeological contexts. Including high-magnification use-wear analysis is particularly valuable because it enables archaeologists to identify ritual activities associated with household spaces that may or may not exhibit specific features or contexts (e.g., burials and caches) that often overtly indicate ritual activities. Within the field, an increasing focus on archaeological methods, which is demonstrated here for obsidian artifacts, ultimately improves our abilities to form archaeological theories and evaluate changes to local ontologies over time. For example, comparing cases of ritual bloodletting from the village of Tetel (750–500 B.C.), small town of La Laguna (ca. 100 B.C.–A.D. 150), and the Tlajinga District of the large city of Teotihuacan (ca. A.D. 250–550) with chronologically contemporary and succeeding examples indicates that bloodletters and bloodletting ritual programs noticeably changed after the collapse of the Teotihuacan state and rise of temple institutions with ritual specialists.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award (#1533539) from the National Science Foundation in 2015. I thank the conference attendees at the annual meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) in 2018, especially David Haskell who led our session on Magical Matters: Foregrounding Matter in Caches, Offerings, and Votive Deposits. These conversations along with the comments of four anonymous reviewers greatly improved the discussion of ontological models in this study. Finally, I thank David Carballo, Ken Hirth, and Curtis Runnels for reviewing earlier manifestations of my work on obsidian bloodletters.

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Walton, D.P. Bloodletting in Ancient Central Mexico: Using Lithic Analyses to Detect Changes in Ritual Practices and Local Ontologies. J Archaeol Method Theory 28, 274–306 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09454-x

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