Survival and Abandonment of Indigenous Head-Shaping Practices in Iberian America after European Contact
Tiesler and Zabala synthesize documentary evidence and osteological data to reveal a humanized history of the varied patterns of cultural resilience, adaptation, and elimination of head-shaping practices in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Throughout many regions of the pre-Hispanic Americas, a wide diversity of indigenous body modification practices combined artificial cranial deformation and other practices of identity, status, and gender. Perceived by the Spanish as a non-Western and “uncivilized” practice that was an affront to the new order in corporeal and theological terms, artificial cranial deformation was aggressively targeted for extirpation. Their analysis indicated head shaping was a vital practice of body modification that was assaulted, alienated, and sometimes transformed in creative and unexpected ways eliminated in the various Iberian strongholds of Hispanic America while progressively eliminated in more peripheral settings.