Headhunting
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Headhunting is the practice of taking a combatant's head after killing him or her. Headhunting was practiced in the pre-colonial era in parts of Nigeria, Nurestan, Assam, Myanmar, Borneo, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Micronesia, Melanesia, New Zealand, and the Amazon Basin, as well as among certain sects of the Celts of ancient Europe and in the Pacific theater of World War II. Today it is a universally prohibited practice and appears to have died out.
As a practice, headhunting has been the subject of intense discussion within the anthropological community as to its possible social roles, functions, and motivations. Contemporary scholars generally agree that its primary function was ceremonial, and that it was part of the process of structuring, reinforcing, and defending hierarchical relationships between communities and individuals. Some experts theorize that the practice stemmed from the belief that the head contained "soul matter" or life force, which could be harnessed through its capture. Themes that arise in anthropological writings about headhunting include mortification of the rival, ritual violence, cosmological balance, the display of manhood, cannibalism, and prestige.
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[edit] Southeast Asia and Melanesia
Headhunting was practiced in many parts of Austronesian southeast Asia and Melanesia. Anthropological writings exist on the Ilongot, Iban, Dayak, Berawan, Wana, and Mappurondo tribes. Among these groups, headhunting was usually a ritual activity rather than an act of war or feuding and involved the taking of a single head. Headhunting acted as a catalyst for the cessation of personal and collective mourning for the community's dead. Ideas of manhood were encompassed in the practice, and the taken heads were prized.
Kenneth George wrote about annual headhunting rituals that he observed among the Mappurondo religious minority, an upland tribe in the south-west part of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Actual heads are not taken; instead, surrogate heads are used, in the form of coconuts. The ritual, called pangngae, takes place at the conclusion of the rice harvesting season. It functions to bring an end to communal mourning for the deceased of the past year; express intercultural tensions and polemics; allow for a display of manhood; distribute communal resources; and resist outside pressures to abandon Mappurondo ways of life.
Around the 1930s, headhunting was suppressed among the Ilongot in the Philippines by the US authorities. In Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, the colonial dynasty of James Brooke and his descendants eradicated headhunting in the hundred years before World War II.
Some believe that Michael Rockefeller may have been taken by headhunters in western New Guinea as recently as 1961.
In his book PT 105, Dick Keresey writes that he was approached by Solomon Island natives in a canoe carrying heads of Japanese soldiers. He initially thought that they wanted to trade, but they continued on their way.
[edit] Amazon
The Shuar in Ecuador and Peru, along the Amazon River, practiced headhunting in order to make shrunken heads for ritual use. The practice is no longer current, but the Shuar still produce replica heads which they sell to tourists.
[edit] New Zealand
In what is now known as New Zealand, the Māori would preserve the heads of enemies, removing the skull and smoking the head. Māori are currently attempting to reclaim the heads of their ancestors held in museums outside New Zealand.
[edit] China
During the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, Qin soldiers were prone to collect their enemies' heads. Since most of the soldiers were slaves, they and their families could be freed from slavery and even secure promotions in the army by returning victorious with heads. The act of Qin soldiers carrying heads in battles usually terrified their foes; as such, headhunting is attributed as being one of the factors in the Qin dynasty defeating six other nations and unifying China.
After the Qin dynasty, headhunting ceased to be practiced amongst Chinese people.
[edit] Taiwan
Headhunting was a common practice among the Taiwanese aborigines. The practice ended around the 1930s during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.
[edit] Celts
The Celts of Europe practiced headhunting for an indeterminate religious reason. Ancient Romans and Greeks recorded the Celts habits of nailing heads of personal enemies to walls or dangling them from the necks of horses.[1] Headhunting was still, in a form, practiced for a great deal longer by the Celtic Gaels — in the Ulster Cycle, Cúchulainn beheads the three sons of Nechtan and mounts their heads on his chariot — though this was probably as a traditional, rather than religious, practice, as the religious reasons for collecting the heads was likely lost after their conversion to Christianity. Heads were also taken among the Germanic tribes and Iberians, but the purpose is unknown.
[edit] World War II
During World War II, Allied (particularly American) troops regularly collected the skulls of dead Japanese as personal trophies, as souvenirs for friends and family at home, and for sale to others. (The practice was unique to the Pacific theater; German and Italian skulls were not taken.) The Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in September of 1942, mandated strong disciplinary action for any soldier who took enemy body parts as souvenirs. Nevertheless, trophy-hunting persisted: Life, in its issue of 22 May 1944, published a photograph of a young woman posing with the autographed skull sent to her by her Navy boyfriend, causing significant public outcry. [2] [3]
[edit] Popular Culture
Headhunters have been made a part of much historical fiction:
- Many episodes of Gilligan's Island have characters who are headhunters.
- Disneyland's Jungle Adventure ride introduces a character holding a head as "our head salesman".
- Predator aliens from the movie Predator practice head-hunting.
[edit] References
- ^ see e.g. Diodorus Siculus, 5.2
- ^ Fussell, Paul (1990). Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 117.
- ^ Harrison, Simon (2006). "Skull Trophies of the Pacific War: Transgressive Objects of remembrance./Les Trophees De la Guerre Du Pacifique Des Cranes Comme Souvenirs Transgressifs". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (4): 817ff..
- Kenneth George (1996). Showing signs of violence: The cultural politics of a twentieth-century headhunting ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20041-1
