Female Sacrafice at the Shimao Ruins

From Raw Story:

Archaeologists in China have unearthed the skulls of more than 80 young women who may have been sacrificed more than 4,000 years ago, state media reported Monday.

The skulls were found in what appears to have been a mass grave at the Shimao Ruins, the site of a neolithic stone city in the northern province of Shaanxi.

The women’s bodies were not present, the official news agency Xinhua said, adding that archaeologists concluded that the skulls were “likely to be related to the construction of the city wall” in “ancient religious activities or foundation ceremonies” before construction began.

In 2005 archaeologists at Hongjiang in the central province of Hunan found an altar devoted to human sacrifice as well as the skeleton of one victim.

A separate altar was used for sacrificing animals at the 7,000-year-old site, which is believed to be the earliest human sacrificial site ever found in the country.

From Channel NewsAsia:

The discovery is not the first instance of researchers unearthing remains related to human sacrifice in early China. Kings and emperors were regularly buried along with their servants and concubines, who were sometimes killed first -- and on other occasions buried alive.

The Shimao Ruins cover more than four square kilometres and were discovered in 1976.

Archaeologists have also found more than 100 remains of murals as well as large amounts of jade ware at the site of the ancient city, which sits in the Yellow River basin and is believed to date back to 2000 BC.

From Business Standard:

These skulls are likely related to the building of the city wall, suggesting that ancient religious activities or foundation ceremonies were organised before construction of the neolithic city began, state-run Xinhua news agency said. 

Built about 4,300 years ago, the city was abandoned about 300 years later during the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in China to be described in ancient historical chronicles.

From Mail Online:

The skulls were found in what appears to have been a mass grave at the Shimao Ruins, the site of a neolithic stone city in the northern province of Shaanxi, China.

The women's bodies were not present, suggesting they were victims of human sacrifice and experts believe they could even be related to the founding ceremony of the ancient city, according to state media.

From Hurriyet Daily News:

The discovery is not the first instance of researchers unearthing remains related to human sacrifice in early China. Kings and emperors were regularly buried along with their servants and concubines, who were sometimes killed first and on other occasions buried alive. The total includes 40 skulls that the Shaanxi provincial government said earlier had been discovered at the site last year.

Women in the Wari Empire

From Peruvian Times: Archaeologists Uncover Remains of Girl Sacrificed Some 1,500 Years Ago

Archaeologists have uncovered remains of a girl who was most probably used as a sacrifice some 1,500 years ago, according to RPP Radio.

The discovery was made in the district of Yautan, 40km inland from Casma in the Ancash region. The remains of the girl were discovered in a tomb by a group of archaeologists and students from the University of Santiago Antunez de Mayolo in Huaraz.

The archaeologists believe the girl could have been sacrificed as an offering to gods of the sea, perhaps as protection against the climate changes caused by the El Niño ocean current.

The Wari empire spanned much of modern Peru during the 8th and 9th Centuries A.D. Experts say that its capital, Huari, had a population of some 40,000 people, which would have been a major global urban center at the time. Much is still not known about the Wari, which like other pre-Hispanic civilizations, is overshadowed in Peru by the Incas.

From the Telegraph: Wari empire royal tomb discovered in Peru

Archaeologists in Peru say they have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women that provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before the Incas.

From Adventure Life: Ancient Peru Brewery

Archeologists have only scratched the surface of discovery in many areas. A recent itch: the historic mountain-top city of Cerro Baúl. Here, at over 8,000 feet above sea level, an ancient brewery of the Wari Empire was found. Twenty ceramic 10 to 15 gallon vats suggest that this was much more than a Mom-and-Pop-shop. In fact, it may be the oldest large-scale brewery ever found in the Andes. It was used to produce great quantities of chicha, a fermented beverage similar to beer made from barley and berries of the pepper tree, Schinus molle.

From ABC News: Royal Peruvian tomb with scores of mummified women sheds light on Wari empire

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed a massive royal tomb full of mummified women which provides clues about the enigmatic Wari empire that ruled the Andes long before their better-known Incan successors.

The mausoleum, unearthed a few months ago at a coastal pyramid site called El Castillo de Huarmey, 299 kilometres north of Lima, contained gold pieces, ceramics and 63 skeletons about 1,300 years old.

Researchers said the discovery will help them piece together life in the Andes centuries before the rise of the Incan empire, which was written about in detail by the conquering Spaniards.

From National Geographic: First Unlooted Royal Tomb of Its Kind Unearthed in Peru

Three queens were buried with golden treasures, human sacrifices

It was a stunning discovery: the first unlooted imperial tomb of the Wari, the ancient civilization that built South America's earliest empire between 700 and 1000 A.D. Yet it wasn't happiness that Milosz Giersz felt when he first glimpsed gold in the dim recesses of the burial chamber in northern Peru.

Giersz, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland, realized at once that if word leaked out that his Polish-Peruvian team had discovered a 1,200-year-old "temple of the dead" filled with precious gold and silver artifacts, looters would descend on the site in droves. "I had a nightmare about the possibility," says Giersz.

Peruvian Female Sacrifice

From Earth Times:

Archeologists in northern Peru have found the remains of a woman who was apparently killed in a 15th-century sacrifice to calm the wrath of nature. The find was made in Chan Chan, the oldest mud citadel in the Americas, archaeologist Raul Sosaya said Tuesday. The expert said the skeleton corresponded to a woman who was 1.55 metres tall and aged about 17. She died around the year 1460 and belonged to the Chimu culture.

Archaeologists found the body as they were working on the restoration of the outer walls of Chan Chan, around 600 kilometres north of Lima.

Sosaya said that one of the woman's feet had been amputated before she was hanged and her body thrown out near a wall. The gestures on her face suggest that she screamed before she died, and archaeologists think that she was sacrificed.

From what researchers know of the Chimu culture, the amputation of a foot was meant to prevent the sacrificed person from leaving the site in later lives.