Kydonia, 13th century B.C. A catastrophic earthquake, between 6.5 and 7.5 Richter, causes a death toll, while the survivors face shock, utter devastation and social dislocation. In an attempt to pacify the angry chthonic gods, a young woman and forty-nine animals are ritually slaughtered. Prior to the final decades of the 20th century excavated skeletal remains were rarely retained for study. Without anthropological research, this human sacrifice would have been lost. This book discusses burials from non-cemetery contexts and earlier, previously doubted claims for human sacrifice in prehistoric Crete. The author has been involved since the 1970’s in research on Minoan human skeletal remains.