headhunting

headhunting, practice of removing and preserving human heads. Headhunting arises in some cultures from a belief in the existence of a more or less material soul matter on which all life depends. In the case of human beings, this soul matter is believed to be particularly located in the head, and removal of the head is believed to capture the soul matter within and add it to the general stock of soul matter belonging to the community, wherein it contributes to the fertility of the human population, livestock, and crops. Headhunting has thus been associated with ideas regarding the head as the seat of the soul, with some forms of cannibalism in which the body or part of the body is consumed in order to transfer to the eater the soul matter of the victim, and with phallic cults and fertility rites intended to imbue the soil with productivity. It may thus develop into human sacrifice, a practice that has been generally associated with agricultural societies.

Headhunting has been practiced worldwide and may go back to Paleolithic times. In deposits of the Late Paleolithic Azilian culture found at Ofnet in Bavaria, carefully decapitated heads were buried separately from the bodies, indicating beliefs in the special sanctity or importance of the head.

In Europe the practice survived until the early 20th century in the Balkan Peninsula, where the taking of the head implied the transfer of the soul matter of the decapitated to the decapitator. The complete head was taken by Montenegrins as late as 1912, being carried by a lock of hair worn allegedly for that purpose. In the British Isles the practice continued approximately to the end of the Middle Ages in Ireland and the Scottish marches.

In Africa headhunting was known in Nigeria, where, as in Indonesia, it was associated with the fertility of the crops, with marriage, and with the victim’s obligation as a servant in the next world.

In Káfiristán (now Nūrestān) in eastern Afghanistan, headhunting was practiced until about the end of the 19th century. In the northeast of India, Assam was famous for headhunting, and indeed all the peoples living south of the Brahmaputra River—Garos, Khasis, Nagas, and Kukis—formerly were headhunters. Headhunting in Assam was normally carried on by parties of raiders who depended on surprise tactics to achieve their ends.

In Myanmar (Burma) several groups followed customs similar to those of the headhunting tribes of India. The Wa people observed a definite headhunting season, when the fertilizing soul matter was required for the growing crop, and wayfarers moved about at their peril. In Borneo, most of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, similar methods of headhunting were practiced. The practice was reported in the Philippines by Martín de Rada in 1577 and was abandoned formally by the Igorot and Kalinga peoples of Luzon only at the beginning of the 20th century. In Indonesia it extended through Ceram, where the Alfurs were headhunters, and to New Guinea, where headhunting was practiced by the Motu. In several areas of Indonesia, as in the Batak country and in the Tanimbar Islands, it seems to have been replaced by cannibalism.

Throughout Oceania headhunting tended to be obscured by cannibalism, but in many islands the importance attached to the head was unmistakable. In parts of Micronesia the head of the slain enemy was paraded about with dancing, which served as an excuse for raising a fee for the chief to defray public expenditure; later the head would be lent to another chief for the same purpose. In Melanesia the head was often mummified and sometimes worn as a mask in order that the wearer might acquire the soul of the dead man. Similarly, it was reported that Aboriginal Australians believed that the spirit of a slain enemy entered the slayer. In New Zealand the heads of enemies were dried and preserved so that tattoo marks and the facial features were recognizable; this practice led to a development of headhunting when tattooed heads became desirable curios and the demand in Europe for Maori trophies caused “pickled heads” to become a regular article of ships’ manifests.

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In South America the heads were often preserved, as by the Jívaro, by removing the skull and packing the skin with hot sand, thus shrinking it to the size of the head of a small monkey but preserving the features intact. There, again, headhunting was probably associated with cannibalism in a ceremonial form.

Despite the prohibition of headhunting activities, scattered reports of such practices continued well into the mid-20th century.