Archaeologists discover first known temple to “flayed god” Xipe Totec

Enlarge / This skinned skull, carved from volcanic stone, once covered the burial pit for the skins of human sacrifices to Xipe Totec. (credit: Melitón Tapia, INAH)
Xipe Totec is a god of agricultural renewal. Worshipped with human sacrifice, his priests wore the victims’ skins as ceremonial attire. Statues and carvings of Xipe Totec have turned up at archaeological sites scattered all over Mexico and Central America, but archaeologists with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) say they’ve found the first known temple dedicated to the god. Preliminary dating suggests the temple saw use from 1000 to 1260 CE, which suggests that it was built before the rise of Aztec culture.
A team led by archaeologist Noemí Castillo Tejero excavated the basement of a pyramid at a temple complex in Puebla state in south-central Mexico, where previous seasons’ excavations had found damaged sculptures of Xipe Totec on a pair of altars out front. Inside, they found two sacrificial altars, a small ceramic statue of the god, and two massive carved skulls that they say also represented the skinned face of the Flayed God.
While this is the first temple to Xipe Totec that archaeologists have studied, documents from the Aztec period describe the annual spring ritual of Tlacaxipehualiztli, or “to wear the skin of the flaying.” In these ceremonies, priests sacrificed captive slaves to Xipe Totec, then carefully skinned their bodies and wore the skins to carry out 20 days of rituals.
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