An altar of “beheaded cultures”. Archaeology and sacrifice at the Museo Nacional de Antropología (Mexico)

Abstract

The National Museum of Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropología) is key in the construction of an image of Mexico and of populations marked as the “other” to the national mestizo subject. The museum presents the progressive development of “archaeological cultures” from the first settlement to its climax in a central room dedicated to the “Mexica empire”, whose fall suspends the temporality of the narrative in the war of conquest in 1521. On the upper floor, the “ethnographic cultures” are arranged as another type of remnant in contiguity with the remains of the past, in dialogue with the archaeological cultures. The presentation of human remains displayed in sacrificial scenes furthermore insinuates a kind of “mimetic magic” conjured up with archaeological images and discourses, through which the contemporary state embodies the sovereign powers of the remote past and thus legitimizes the violence of the more recent past.