Hard evidence for New World cannibalism is far thinner than assumed.

Evidence

The question of cannibalism represents a puzzle which has never been resolved. Human sacrifice—which may have included cannibalism—was associated with some religious rituals. There may have been ritual sacrifice, involving some cannibalism, of captured enemies. But careful reviews of the relevant literature now suggest that the hard evidence is much sketchier and more ambiguous than has been assumed. The extent of any cannibalism was considerably exaggerated: it was frequently attributed by one tribe to “other people”—who were rivals or enemies. Much of what is offered as having been witnessed firsthand turns out to be secondor thirdhand reports; the practice had usually just ended months before the European visitors arrived. The evidence that, as a normal matter, of course, outside ritual occasions, New World Indians regularly sat down to an evening meal composed of juicy limbs of their fellow humans is extremely thin. (See, for example, the extensive analysis of the anthropological literature in Arens 1978.) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 631

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how far do the Arens (1978) arguments extend toward other colonial-era ‘barbarism’ accusations (e.g., oriental despotism, torture claims)? Is the same evidence-sketchiness pattern repeated?
• XREF: Mirrors the critique later applied to Islamophobic claims about Muslim practices — exaggerated, secondhand, attributed to rivals — showing a repeatable skeptical method for debunking representational folklore.
• SEED: An article angle: the systematic pattern where atrocity accusations against colonized/out-groups are always ‘just ended before we arrived’ and always secondhand — debunking as a genre of critique.