HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT MAYA IN THE ...

36Implements such stone tools may have facilitated in the disarticulation and/or defleshingof a semi-decomposed body. An ossuary also falls under the category of a secondaryburial. This type of burial entails the act of exhuming and reburying skeletal remains inorder to accommodate the burial of other individuals. This usually involves theintentional rearrangement and relocation of skeletal material in a different location.Human sacrificeThe act of human sacrifice represents an important pan-Mesoamerican theme thatoccurs in the art, iconography and writing of the ancient Maya. Bioarchaeological andethnohistorical records have also contributed to the growing corpus of evidencesubstantiating the practice of human sacrifice in the Maya area. For instance,osteological studies of human remains have documented skeletal evidence for humansacrifice (Blos et al. 2002, Massey and Steele 1997). Welsh (1988:144) asserts that“evidence for sacrifice consists primarily, though not exclusively, of skeletalmutilation.” Evidence of mutilation includes bodily injury (trauma) or the intentionalremoval of a body part (decapitation, cutting off fingers, etc.) (Welsh 1988). However,mutilation may also include any activity that leaves some identifiable mark on a skeletalelement, i.e. cut marks. This does not imply that every cut mark qualifies as evidencefor human sacrifice.The interpretation of human sacrifice via cut marks is akin to the examination ofsecondary burial, whereby the anatomical location of cut marks is a very crucial point ofanalysis. Death by decapitation is a common form of human sacrifice documented in theMaya area. Osteological evidence indicating decapitation and flaying of sacrificial