Current Anthropology Volume 58, Number 2, April 2017
Book and Film Reviews
Reinforcing Power through Violence
and Ritual Ecology
Shaina Molano
Interdisciplinary Humanities, School of Social Sciences, Hu-
manities, and Arts, University of California, Merced, 5200 North
Lake Road, Merced, California 95343, USA (smolano@ucmerced
.edu). 7 VII 16
Sacrice, Violence, and Ideology among the Moche: The Rise
of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru. By Steve Bourget.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
How do we understand the roles that ritual and ideology play
in the rise of social complexity in antiquity? What types of evi-
dence does the archaeological record provide us to answer this
question? Moreover, what lines of evidence can be used in con-
junction with archaeological evidence to better understand the
importance of ritual and ideology in the formation of social
complexity? Steve Bourgets Sacrice, Violence, and Ideology
among the Moche attempts to better understand these ques-
tions while looking at the social complexity and ideological sys-
tem of the Moche polity in the pre-Columbian north-central
Andes. Bourget addresses how the Moche, at different stages
of their political development, used violence, in the form of
sacrice and bloodletting, as well as ritual ecology to establish
the power of the elite, thus reinforcing their social and ideo-
logical control. Furthermore, Bourget hypothesizes that El Nio
Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events were transformed and
used by the Moche to impose their ideology and symbolic sys-
tem. They did this despite potential harm and damage caused
by ENSO events (5). This book addresses Moche social com-
plexity through multiple lines of evidence, including analysis
of architecture, ideology, human remains, and ecological rem-
nants affected by recurring El Nio events in the form of fau-
nal remains and ood patterns. Through this innovative inte-
gration of data sets, Bourget presents a series of novel advances
in this strong volume.
Sacrice, Violence, and Ideology among the Moche begins
with an introduction to the cultural landscape of the Peruvian
north-central coast and a brief look at the Moche culture itself.
Rising to power in the Early Intermediate Period (AD 1700),
the Moche culture was potentially comprised of two polities
that exhibited signs of complex social structure and an elabo-
rate ideological system exemplied through monumental ar-
chitecture, detailed iconography and art, and highly ritualized
acts. The most prominent documented ritual activity of the
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307
Moche comes in the form of human sacrice. Bourget asks
what role ritualized human sacrice played in the culture and
ideology of the Moche. Like most Moche scholars, he recog-
nizes that people, objects, and places featured in Moche ico-
nography are representative of real people and events, and he
uses this to aid his analysis of objects found in the archaeo-
logical record. In his analysis, he presumes that the iconog-
raphy is representative of the ever-rened Moche ideological
program (14).
One of the strongest contributions of the volume is the fo-
cus on the plaza 3A and platform II excavations at the Huaca
de la Luna site (chapters 3 and 4). Archaeological data from
plaza 3A reveal that approximately 75100 males were sac-
riced over many rain events interspersed with times of cli-
mactic dryness. Biological anthropological evidence suggests
that there were extended periods where injuries were repeat-
edly sustained and healed for the victims that he argues may
be representative of the waiting time for the large-scale rain
events needed to perform the actual ritual sacrices. Periods
of time when ENSO events did not occur may have been used
for preliminary rituals, including trauma inicted on the vic-
tims. However, much is still unknown about the nature of the
sacricial events, and this is merely presented as a hypothesis.
Excavations at platform II, alternatively, revealed three indi-
vidual tombs. Tombs 1 and 3 house adult males, while tomb 2
houses a juvenile male, possibly associated with the tomb 3
individual. On the basis of afliated ceramic iconography from
the tombs, which show prominent Moche themes, it is thought
that the individuals from tombs 1 and 3 are sacricers. Bourget
asserts that it is imperative to look at the burials from plaza 3A
and platform II within the larger context of Huaca de la Luna,
asking who were the sacricers as well as the sacriced and
what was their place within in the larger Moche population,
social structure, and ideology? Additionally, what was the role
played by El Nio phenomena during these sacricial events
and within the larger Moche ideology? These interesting ques-
tions that tie direct evidence to larger questions of sacrice and
ritual ecology are one of the highlights of this volume.
In the books building chapters, Bourget addresses the roles
and nature of violence within Moche culture, the interrelated
nature of power and ritual ecology, and the potential effective-
ness of Moche ideology. Despite extensive excavations at mul-
tiple sites within the northern and southern Moche peripheries
in the past few decades, very little is known about Moche rul-
ership. Bourget successfully breaks down Moche rulership into
three stages (A, B, and C). Throughout the stages, certain elite
individuals seem to take on more prominent roles in ceramic
iconography, as exemplied through common thematic scenes
of ritual battle and sacrice. Violence, as seen in these motifs of
ritual warfare, sacricial acts, and bloodtaking, seem to reinforce
the importance and power of these key elite individuals. Data
collected at plaza 3A suggests that these ritualized events hon-
oring these elite four individuals (real or not) were large events
where allegiance could be given to this prominent system and
 308
ideology. Additionally, this elite power might have been re-
inforced through the use of ritual ecology and ENSO events for
major sacricial moments. What was the purpose of such sac-
ricial events? Were they conducted in times of stress (caused
by severe weather events) to appeal to some higher power, or
possibly these weather events were utilized to reinforce the
power and structure of the elite? The purposefully built archi-
tecture for ritual and sacricial events in association with elab-
orately constructed iconography displaying images of sacrice
suggest that these events were carefully planned. It is unclear
how the ENSO events factored in, but it is likely that they were
a part of this purposefully conceived plan as well.
Bourget ends his book returning to a common question for
Moche scholars in recent years: what was the role of sacrice
in the Moche social structure and ideology? Two main schools
of thought regarding this issue have arisen: those who argue
that the sacricial remains were from individuals of higher
status, captured in ritual battles, and those who think the sac-
riced individuals were captured during normative battles be-
tween competing groups or polities. Moche battle scenes do
not often show Moche warriors ghting other groups, and they
do not show grand celebrations of victories of other groups.
Bourget claims that they most often depict a number of indi-
viduals clad in warrior costumes, battling others dressed in
a similar fashion. Bourget presents two possible conclusions
based on the archaeological and symbolic information: (1) the
Moche would obtain their captives from regular combat with
possibly nearby enemies, other Moche groups, or foreign groups;
and (2) the Moche would obtain sacricial victims through a
selection process that may have included ritualized battles.
In this powerful and extensive book, Bourget does an excel-
lent job of using multiple lines of evidence to assess the roles
played by violence and ritual ecology within the larger Moche
social and ideological system, as exemplied in the excava-
tions at Huaca de la Luna. Furthermore, Bourget details how
the Moche rulers and elite could have used ENSO events to
promote a type of ritual ecology that would further reinforce
their power as well as the larger Moche ideological system that
promoted the necessity of ritual battle and sacrice. Although
the nature of excavations and resulting conclusions from such
a massive and important temple structure would naturally yield
information regarding elite and ritual acts, it would be interesting
to build on this work with more information regarding the role
played by common people within this larger ideological system.
The Social Power of Captives
Peter N. Peregrine
Lawrence University, 711 East Boldt Way, Appleton, Wiscon-
sin 54911, USA; and Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road,
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA (peter.n.peregrine@lawrence
.edu). 10 XI 16
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Current Anthropology Volume 58, Number 2, April 2017
Captives: How Stolen People Changed the World. By
Catherine M. Cameron. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015.
This slim volume packs lot of information into a very few pages.
It is clear, well written, engaging, and puts forward an impor-
tant idea: that captives (and slaves, who Cameron includes as
captives for the purpose of her argument) are not passive tools
of their masters but rather are potent sources of ideas and in-
novations that can have a dramatic impact on the groups in
which they are captive. I was fortunate to be a participant in
the Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry conference that kin-
dled Camerons interest in slavery and captivity (Cameron
2008), and I found it fascinating to see how she has developed
and rened the nascent ideas discussed at the conference into
a coherent and potentially important perspective on the role
played by captives in cultural transmission and change.
The rst chapter lays out the general goals of the work.
While aimed primarily at archaeologistswhom Cameron ar-
gues have ignored the importance of captivesshe also points
out that little anthropological work has been done on captive
taking and the role played by captives, at least compared with
that for slavery. Cameron explains why archaeologists and other
social scientists should pay more attention to captives: (1) they
increase social stratication, (2) they provide labor and so-
cial power, (3) they dene social boundaries, and (4) they are
conduits for cultural transmission. To explore these roles, Cam-
eron takes an explicitly comparative approach, looking at exam-
ples of captives and captivity in societies around the world.
This is the one aspect of the book that I dislike, for Cameron,
in my perspective, is not really undertaking a comparative
study; rather, she is examining a series of case studies in a non-
systematic way.
A true comparative study of captives would start with a ran-
dom sample of societies and identify specic aspects of those
societies, the captives in them, and the nature of captivity to
explore. Information on these specic aspects would be col-
lected from ethnographies and then analyzed using a formal
method to empirically identify similarities and differences and,
where possible, to explore general patterns shared widely by
the societies. That Cameron does not undertake a systematic
comparative study does not detract from the book, but I think
the book would have been much stronger with some system-
atic comparative analysis included. Indeed, one of the primary
sources Cameron uses is Orlando Pattersons classic Slavery
and Social Death (1982), which is a systematic comparative
work of the kind that Cameron might have emulated.
Cameron undertakes the primary comparative part of the
book in the second chapter. She gives examples of captive
taking from around the world, although the focus of more
than half the chapter is on North America. This is not par-
ticularly surprising, as the ethnographic record about Na-
tive North Americans is extraordinarily rich and, as Cameron
points out, depopulation from European diseases and intensi-
ed conict following European intrusions may have increased