The find has experts puzzled, as it is the first of its kind to be outside of a major pyramid or temple complex, and was in a simple mound, easy to overlook.
Christopher Morehart,
an archaeologist with the Georgia State University, is credited with
the find in Xaltocan, a farming village north of Mexico City.
Morehart told AP, "The interesting question is, why are we seeing this
kind of sacrificial act that we often associate with something like
Teotihuacan or a big center. Why do we see this … in a place that's not
associated with these cities?"
According to Morehart, the Xaltocan mound "is like a bump in the
landscape that you could really easily walk over and not know you're
standing on it."
Morehart said that carbon dating of the skulls suggested they were at least 1,100 years old and that most were from men.
Apparently the skulls were also found with a shorter length of vertebrae
attached, which suggests that the decapitation cut was made closer to
the base of the skull.
Morehart also said that several of the skulls
were found with finger bones inserted into the eye sockets.
He said,
"It was common enough that it was intentionally placed there in the
eye socket," but he did say that the ritual significance of that remains
unclear.
Ironically Morehart and his colleagues stumbled across the site while
using Google Earth to investigate ancient waterworks surrounding the
ancient kingdom of Teotihuacan.
Probably dating to a time between 660 and 860 AD, the heads appeared to
have been carefully placed in rows, or small mounds, and most face east
towards the rising sun.
Abigail Meza Penaloza, a physical anthropologist with the Institute of
Anthropology at Mexico's National University is part of a team cleaning
and assembling the skulls. Penaloza also reportedly confirmed that it
was the first find of its kind, both in terms of the kind of decapitations carried out and also the location.
She told the media that mass sacrifices have often been documented at
temple inaugurations of temple closings, but not in the middle of
fields, such as in this example.
She also noted that it was unusual that the skulls were from a varied
population. Some reportedly practiced cranial deformation and others
did not, whereas most groups of sacrifice victims found in the past have
been more homogenous.
To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342722
