An Osteological Study of Trophy Heads: Unveiling the Headhunting Practice in Borneo

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 685-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Okumura ◽  
Yun Ysi Siew
Keyword(s):  
Trophy Heads

Tropical sun and trophy heads

Art History ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-134
Author(s):  
Christian Weikop
Keyword(s):  
Trophy Heads

Displays of Violence and Power at the Edge of the Empire: Provincial Trophy Heads during Inca Times

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (03) ◽  
pp. 606-623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Garrido ◽  
Catalina Morales
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Southern Andes ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Late Horizon ◽  
New Form ◽  
Trophy Heads ◽  
Ritual Practices ◽  
Grave Goods

The Inca expansion to the southern Andes catalyzed important political and symbolic changes in local communities. In addition to economic changes in mining production and the installation of logistical and administrative infrastructure, new forms of ideological violence emerged in the Copiapó Valley, Chile. One new form was the display and discarding of human heads, a burial pattern unprecedented in the region. In this article, we present evidence of perforated heads buried without grave goods next to a local cemetery in a Late Horizon village. We argue that the performative use of modified severed heads from young individuals at the Iglesia Colorada site was part of Inca ritual practices. Their use represented an effort to ideologically rule over newly incorporated subjects by demonstrating power and ensuring their compliance.

Childhood Lost: Abductions, Sacrifice, and Trophy Heads of Children in the Wari Empire of the Ancient Andes

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffiny A. Tung ◽  
Kelly J. Knudson
Keyword(s):  
Isotope Ratios ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Strontium Isotope ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Trophy Heads ◽  
Strontium Isotope Ratios ◽  
Policies And Practices

AbstractThis study examines isolated child skeletal remains from ritual structures at the Wari site of Conchopata (A.D. 600–1000) to evaluate how they were modified into trophy heads and whether the children were sacrificed. The skeletal remains represent at least seven children. Strontium isotope ratios are examined to determine whether children were taken from foreign locales. Results show that the children’s skulls exhibit a hole on the apex of the cranium and on the ascending ramus of the mandible, identical to the adult Wari trophy heads. At least one child may have been sacrificed.87Sr/86Sr demonstrate that two of the four sampled child trophy heads were nonlocal, suggesting that children were occasionally abducted from distant communities, perhaps for sacrifice and certainly to transform some into trophy heads. The similar child and adult trophy heads suggest that the ritual treatment of children was not uniquely designed, at least as it related to their processing, display, and destruction. Furthermore, it is suggested that the child trophy heads were not simply passive symbols of pre-existing authority by the head-takers and trophy head-makers. The trophy heads simultaneously imbued those agents with authority—they did not merely reflect it—demonstrating the “effective agency” of the trophy head objects themselves. Finally, we suggest that prisoner-taking and trophy head-making by military and ritual elites served to legitimate the authority of those individuals while simultaneously serving larger state goals that enhanced Wari state authority and legitimated its policies and practices.

The geographic origins of Nasca trophy heads using strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope data

2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Knudson ◽  
Sloan R. Williams ◽  
Rebecca Osborn ◽  
Kathleen Forgey ◽  
Patrick Ryan Williams
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Isotope ◽  
Oxygen And Carbon Isotope ◽  
Isotope Data ◽  
Geographic Origins ◽  
Trophy Heads

A Cache of 48 Nasca Trophy Heads from Cerro Carapo, Peru

1993 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Browne ◽  
Helaine Silverman ◽  
Rubén García
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Context ◽  
South Coast ◽  
The South ◽  
Salvage Operation ◽  
Skeletal Material ◽  
Trophy Heads

The recent discovery of a cache of 48 Nasca severed heads provides archaeologists with the largest-known associated and provenienced corpus of this material. Although recovery of the skulls was conducted as a salvage operation and the wider spatial context of the find is still unknown, preliminary physical anthropological analysis of the skeletal material, along with archaeological comparison of the cache, provide valuable information on the nature and role of head-hunting in ancient Nasca society of the south coast of Peru.

scholarly journals London's Hadrianic War?

Britannia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 37-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Perring
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Trophy Heads

ABSTRACTRecent work has advanced our understanding of human crania found in London's upper Walbrook valley, where skull deposition appears to have peaked during the occupation of the Cripplegate fort, itself probably built soon after London's Hadrianic fire. Although this fire is usually considered to have been accidental, parallels can be drawn with London's Boudican destruction. This article explores the possibility that these three strands of Hadrianic evidence — fire, fort and skulls — find common explanation in events associated with a British war of this period. This might support the identification of some Walbrook skulls as trophy heads, disposed asnoxiiin wet places in the urbanpomerium.

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