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

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.

London's Hadrianic War?

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.

Trophy Heads or Ancestor Veneration? A Stable Isotope Perspective on Disassociated and Modified Crania in Precontact Central California

Few items in the archaeological record capture the imagination more than human heads separated from their bodies. Such items are sometimes assumed to indicate warfare practices, where “trophy heads” display power and fighting prowess. Other times, they are interpreted as representing ancestor veneration. Isolated crania are not uncommon in the Early period (ca. 4500–2500 B.P.) in Central California. Some anthropologists interpret them as trophy heads, but isotopie analyses at CA-CCO-548 suggest an alternative interpretation. Strontium isotope analyses on one modified cranium produced values consistent with local individuals, and both headless burials and people buried with extra skulls overlap in carbon and nitrogen isotopes. Further, teeth from two individuals who were buried with extra skulls suggest both were weaned at early ages (before age 2), much earlier than other individuals at the site. Together with contextual information, we argue that the isotopie data are more consistent with the hypothesis that extra skulls and headless burials represent ancestor veneration rather than trophies, shedding new light on Early-period societies in Central California.

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

This 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.