Who’s Afraid of the S-word? Deviants’ Burials and Human Sacrifice

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank Editor Þóra Pétursdóttir for recognizing the value of this discussion. We are also grateful to Neil Price for insightful and constructive comments.

Notes

1 The OED definition provided by Reynolds is given ‘as “the slaughter of an animal or person or the surrender of a possession as an offering to a deity” (Thompson 1995, pp. 1212–1213).’ Beyond oblation to a deity, we contend that often a human sacrifice might be alternatively dedicated to an ancestor, some other supernatural entity, or even to a recently deceased member of the community.

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Funding

This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway as part of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (PI Rane Willerslev; FRIPRO HUMSAM, project 275947). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2019.104.