Giving an Arm and a Leg: Healing Dedications and the Performance of Anatomical Votive Offering

This project explores the function of anatomical votive offerings in both ancient Greek and modern Mexican religious traditions, focusing on their role within broader frameworks of ritual practice and modes of care. Through the examination of two distinct case studies, it demonstrates how these objects have been used to seek healing and engage with the divine across time and place. Rather than adopting a strictly comparative or diagnostic approach, this synthesis of archaeological and ethnographic evidence, as well as secondary scholarship, situates these objects within the lived experience of illness, emphasizing what they do rather than simply what they represent. The concepts of votive timeline and sanctuary structure are considered, revealing how anatomical votives actively participate in both and influence factors such as the collective experience of pilgrims and their proximity to the divine. The importance of an offering’s individual testimony and the creation of a cumulative narrative of healing that visitors can engage with are key elements of discussion, supporting the notion that by transforming the body or its parts into a material object that can be carried and displayed, anatomical votives make both suffering and the potential for healing visible. Ultimately, this research illustrates that their relative accessibility and overall adaptability as ritual objects make anatomical votives useful for studying how a population pursues healing, and the role of religion and sanctuaries in mediating divine and mortal relationships.