A corps of talented Andean bioarchaeologists, comprehensively addressing multiple lines of evidence from large North Coast skeletal samples with often-excellent preservation, have arguably brought the study of ritual violence on ancient human bodies to a more advanced point than anywhere else in the world. In a significant new book, originating in a 2011 SAA symposium, Haagen Klaus and J. Marla Toyne collect 12 studies to showcase this rapidly expanding body of research. The resulting volume is comprehensive and well organized, and the overall quality of the individual papers is high. Some document new samples that have not been published before, such as the Matrix 101 large-scale sacrifice deposit from the heart of Sican's central precinct (in a chapter by Klaus and Izumi Shimada). Others apply meticulous new analyses to well-known cases. The chapters are organized into sections spotlighting variation and continuity over time, the question of victims’ identities, and forms of animal and object sacrifice. Concluding discussions by Tiffiny Tung and Vera Tiesler, scholars working outside the North Coast, round out the volume. The overall thrust of the book is empirical rather than programmatic; attending closely to evidentiary patterns, contributors develop a number of fruitful insights.

Chapters on Moche captive warriors and sacrifice in the Lambayeque-La Leche region stand out for their depth and richness. Laurel Hamilton's detailed study of sharp force trauma on sacrificed bodies at the Huaca de la Luna brings into focus complex sequences of torture and postmortem mutilation, and how they changed over about four centuries. Along with Heather Backo's taphonomic study documenting the selective removal and repositioning of body parts at Plaza 3A, this new analysis highlights the extended, multistage process of Moche sacrifice, with multiple occasions for display and manipulation of the victims and their corpses.

Several strong chapters consider diversity over time and across contexts in the Lambayeque area, where recent excavations have recovered sacrificial deposits on an unprecedented scale. They include a contribution by Klaus and Shimada exploring the contrast between Middle Sican sacrificial practices in elite monumental contexts versus nonelite communities; a chapter by Klaus and colleagues on a long-term program of sacrifice at Chotuna-Chornancap, spanning the Chimu-to-Inca timeframe; and one by Toyne on the scores of accumulated sacrifices at Túcume's Templo de la Piedra Sagrada.

As an edited book, the volume is unusually coherent. Not only are there many overlapping threads between chapters, from methodological techniques to the perennial question of victim identity and the distinction between violation and veneration, but the papers in combination highlight fascinating patterns of continuity and diversity in sacrificial practice in this region. Toyne, Klaus, and John Verano have made a strong case for a coherent North Coast tradition of blood sacrifice using specific bodily practices that must have been handed down, perhaps by specialists, through the rise and fall of political regimes. With others such as Hamilton, they have established that, for more than a thousand years, the preferred technique of blood sacrifice in this region was repetitive throat slitting with a sharp metal knife on the anterior surface of the throat, performed by a sacrificer who was positioned behind or above the victim. By at least AD 850, chest opening was also performed on victims whose throats had been cut, and this practice persisted for over 500 years. However, the victims of these conventionalized acts of violence shifted from captive warriors at the Huaca de la Luna and Pacatnamú to local commoner children and men at Cerro Cerrillos, Chotuna-Chornancap, and Túcume in Lambayeque, who were given simple but respectful burial after their violent deaths. Throat cutting was also selected as the mode of execution for enemy villagers who were swiftly killed but not evidently sacrificed in a religious sense at Punta Lobos, discussed in a chapter by Verano and Sara Phillips. As victims’ identities changed, so did the premortem and postmortem treatment of sacrificed bodies. Scale – the number of victims – and tempo – the frequency of sacrifice events – also seem to have been quite malleable. These remarkable paradoxes of continuity and change are on full display in this book. While the physical motions of killing remained essentially the same, the victims, the context, the audience, the rulers, and perhaps the supernatural beings, changed radically and so, we must assume, did the meanings of these violent performances for those involved.

Standing in contrast with blood sacrifice are forms of killing that kept the body intact, such as strangulation or live interment. They are discussed in several of the chapters, including one by David Chicoine for Huambacho in the Nepeña valley, and by Sylvia Bentley and Klaus for retainer burials over time. These “quieter” kinds of sacrifice were usually associated with different categories of victims than blood sacrifice (e.g., women versus men), with different social classes of practitioners (as Klaus and Shimada argue for Sican versus Muchik sacrifices in Lambayeque), with different contexts (retainers and dedicatory burials versus offerings), and with specific ritual meanings, as in Inca capac hucha sacrifices. Chicoine argues that, for the Moche, different metaphors of animal predation informed blood sacrifice (felines) and ligature (constrictor serpents). Given the lasting importance of blood sacrifice, bloodless sacrifice may have been performed in deliberate counterpoint to it, constructing distinct categories of victims for distinct kinds of occasions. These correspondences shifted over time and space, however, and are still poorly understood. Retainer burials, which may have been quite variable in practice, pose a particularly difficult challenge for interpretation. Two chapters, by Catherine Gaither and colleagues on Santa Rita B (in Chao) and by Elsa Tomasto-Cagigao and colleagues on San Jose de Moro, address Late Moche to Transitional period interments that accompanied principal individuals. A few bear perimortem blunt-force trauma, and atypical body positions and postmortem manipulation suggest retainer sacrifice while defying easy categorization.

One particularly interesting angle of the book is the explicit consideration of the link between human sacrifice and the destruction of non-human beings. Paul Szpak and colleagues offer a thoughtful discussion of sacrificed camelids at Huancaco in Virú and beyond. Sacrificed camelids were sometimes treated in very similar ways to human victims, possibly considered analogous. The smashing, “decapitation,” and “wounding” of ceramics, especially anthropomorphic vessels, also accompanied human sacrifice, and in some cases may have stood in for it (discussed in chapters by Jean-François Millaire and others). These points reinforce the notion that while sacrificial liturgy on the North Coast appears conservative in some respects, it was in many ways highly amenable to substitution and innovation.

Through the meticulous documentation of sacrificial violence that took place over more than a thousand years, these authors have achieved remarkable insights and amassed material for a deeper understanding of how ritual tradition works and how it evolves. It is therefore slightly disappointing that Klaus and Toyne do not attempt a more ambitious synthesis with their introductory chapter. While they lay out some conceptual tools from general theoretical literature on sacrifice, these tools remain mostly unused. However, perhaps it is premature to desire synthesis from a field in such rapid flux, treating such a multivalent phenomenon. This new volume impressively captures the current state of knowledge about North Coast sacrifice in all its hair-raising specificity.