Temalacatl
The temalacatl was a great round stone disk set flat in an Aztec plaza as the stage for gladiatorial sacrifice, a rite tied to the festival of Xipe Totec in which a captive was bound, usually by a rope through the central hole, and made to fight successive armed warriors while holding only a feathered club. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who watched the combat in Tenochtitlan, recorded the ordeal in vivid detail, describing how the exhausted captive was finally cut down and his body carried away. The best-known survivor, the Stone of Tizoc, is a basalt disk carved with the conquests of the emperor