Human Sacrifice and Value

Revisiting the Limits of Sacred Violence from an Anthropological and Archaeological Perspective

Matthew J. Walsh, Sean O'Neill, Marianne Moen, Svein H. Gullbekk, Eva-Johanna Marie Lafuente Nilsson, Matthew J. Walsh, Sean O'Neill, Marianne Moen, Svein H. Gullbekk, Eva-Johanna Marie Lafuente Nilsson, Sean O'Neill, Matthew J. Walsh, Marianne Moen, Svein H. Gullbekk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032134864
• eBook ISBN: 9781000981865
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council's generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947). This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings.

Bridging a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, daring us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by considering the oft hidden, subliminal and even paradoxical values and motivations that underlie sacrificial acts. The chapters give needed attention to pivotal questions in studies of sacrifice and ritualized violence – such as how we might employ new approaches to the existing evidence or revise long-debated theories about what exactly 'human sacrifice' is or might be, or why human sacrifice seems to emerge so often and so easily in human social experience across time and in vastly different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, the volume will strike a chord with scholars of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, religious studies, political science and economics – wherever interest is focused on critically rethinking questions of sacred and sanctified human violence, and the values that make it what it is.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introducing sacrificial values
• Part I Observing Sacrificial Logics and Social Values
• Part II Reading Logics and Values from Archaeology
• Part III Reading Transitions in Value Through Exegesis, Ethnology and Critical Synthesis
• Index