Human Sacrifice at Tula: Reputation, Representation, and Reality

Since the mid-twentieth century it has been a staple of the archaeological and art historical literature on Tula, that its Early Postclassic art was almost exclusively focused on themes of human sacrifice, and thereby exceeded in scope and intensity that of prior Mesoamerican cultures. This characterization arose in the context of the prevailing notion that the Classic Mesoamerican civilizations, both Maya and Teotihuacan, were pacifist theocracies. In fact, there are no direct, barrative representations of human sacrifice in Tula’s art. Although the Tula art tradition drew on many sources, it rejected the graphic portrayals of sacrifice and bloodletting characteristic of its Maya and Veracruz precursors and contemporaries in favor of the more indirect imagery of sacrifice found in Teotihuacan art. My paper examines both the archaeological and the iconographic evidence of human sacrifice at Tula to present a more nuanced and current assessment of the role of ritual violence in the city’s religion and politics.