I went digging through my database and the most recent book I found the sacrifice at Anemospilia is mentioned by Kyriakides in Ritual in Bronze Age Aegean: Minoan Peak Sanctuaries. Marinatos put out a book in the early 80s about Minoan sacrifice rituals that delves into it a bit more, if my memory serves me correctly. The going story seems to be that there was considerable seismic activity going on in the region, and a human sacrifice was a last ditch effort to please the gods. The boy (~18) on the altar was already dead and his blood being drained when an earthquake struck and the priest (mid-30s I believe) and priestess (early 20s) were killed. It's been awhile since I had free time to devote to my love of all things ancient (damn al-Qaeda ), so that story may have been revised.

For me, the problem of using methods like those on cultures like the Minoans is this; we can't really read what they were writing down to check the interpretation against. Linear A is still a mystery and anything writing in Linear B has to do with goods- even 'cult' objects found in temples. So what if Fred from Hamlet B brought 3 goat skins of vino and it's inscribed on fork found in a temple? Classicists/Archaeologists believe the Greek chthonic goddesses are Minoan in descent, but can we really reverse engineer religious beliefs from 5th Century Athenians? I don't know. I don't mean to be argumentative. Maybe it's my evil, inner Classicist that is very skeptical.

Anyway, I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for human sacrifices in Uganda. Might squeeze and article out of it someday...