A cultural practice from ancient times, the gruesome subject of human sacrifice is one that has been tackled by historians, archaeologists and anthropologists alike. Only by bringing together evidence from across these academic disciplines can we achieve a well-rounded picture of how and why human sacrifice has been a feature of so many societies throughout history. “I’ve previously defined sacrifice as a religious ritual where a living being is deliberately killed in the process for the purposes of the event and usually in honour of a supernatural entity,” says Professor Laerke Recht, an archaeologist and the author of Human Sacrifice: Archaeological Perspectives from Around the World. “I would stress that this is a working definition and one that is in a sense artificial. It is not a definition that you would find in any ancient source as such, but one that allows me to specify the kinds of practices that I would include. It also covers a great variety of rituals, and many blur with other practices such as burials, wars and feasts.”
The word ‘sacrifice’ literally means to ‘make sacred’, which is why most of our understanding of human sacrifice is so intertwined with the religion of the people who took part in it. But confining sacrifice to a purely religious phenomenon would be too simplistic. Given how many cultures, civilisations and
