This book investigates the concept of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms. It examines its value across different cultures and time periods, delving into expressions of sacrifice through actual killings, ritualized or sanctified violence or loss, and transformed (and often sublimated) undertakings.
Drawing from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, challenging us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by uncovering the often hidden, subliminal, and even paradoxical values and motivations behind sacrificial acts.
Human Sacrifice and Value: Revisiting the Limits of Sacred Violence from an Anthropological and Archaeological Perspective is edited by Matthew Walsh, Sean O’Neill, Marianne Moen, Svein Harald Gullbekk, Oxford and New York, 2023, 472 pp including articles on CEO dismissal as an act of human sacrifice by Jan Ketil Arnulf, Janicke Rasmussen, Sandra Hjersing and Thea Berner; The Economy of Sacrifice. Christ, coins and the Eucharist in the Middle Ages by Svein H. Gullbekk and Martin Wansgaard Jürgensen, and Some human Sacrifices in Mongolia and their rationales by Caroline Humphrey.
This book was written in collaboration with colleagues in the research project Human Sacrifice & Value: the limits of sacred violence at the Museum of Cultural History.