The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians

Part I: North America

- Preface to North American section

- Introduction to Human Trophy Taking: An Ancient and Widespread Practice

- Heads, Women, and the Baubles of Prestige: Trophies of War in the Arctic and Subarctic

- Human Trophy Taking on the Northwest Coast: An Ethnohistorical Perspective

- Ethnographic and Linguistic Evidence for the Origins of Human-Trophy Taking in California

- Head Trophies and Scalping: Images in Southwest Rock Art

- Human Finger and Hand Bone Neclaces from the Plains and Great Basin

- Predatory War and Hopewell Trophy-Taking

- Otinontsiskiaj Ondaon, "The House of Cut-off Heads:" The History and Archaeology of Northern Iroquoian Trophy-Taking

- Human Trophy Taking in Eastern North America During the Archaic Period: Its Relationship to Warfare and Social Complexity

- Severed Heads and Sacred Scalplocks: Mississippian Iconographic Trophies

- Disabling the Dead: Human Trophy Taking in the Prehistoric Southeast

- Prehistoric Trophy Taking in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley

Part II: Latin America

- Preface to Latin American section

- Captive Sacrifice and Trophy Taking among the Ancient Maya: An Evaluation of the Bioarchaeological Evidence and its Sociopolitical Implications

- The Divine Gourd Tree: Tzompanlti Skull Racks, Decapitation Rituals, and Human Trophies in Ancient Mesoamerica

- Sorcery and Trophy Head Taking in Ancient Costa Rica

- From Corporeality to Sanctity: Transforming Bodies into Trophy Heads in the Prehispanic Andes

- Human Trophies in the Late Pre-Hispanic Andes: Striving for Status and Maintaining Power among the Incas and Other Societies

- Seeking the Headhunter's Power: The Quest for Arutam Among the Achuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Development of Ranked Societies

- Handsome Death: The Taking, Veneration, and Consumption of Human Remains in the Insular Caribbean and Greater Amazonia

- Human Trophy Taking in the South American Gran

Richard John Chacon is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Winthrop University. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Amazonia among the Yanomamo of Venezuela, the Yora of Peru and the Achuar (Shiwiar) of Ecuador and he has also worked in the Andes with the Otavalo and Cotacachi Indians of Highland Ecuador. His research interests include optimal foraging theory, indigenous subsistence strategies, warfare, belief systems, the evolution of complex societies, ethnohistory and the effects of globalization on indigenous peoples.

 

David H. Dye is an Associate Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Memphis. He has conduced archaeological research throughout the Southeastern. His research interests include the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Midsouth. He has had a long-term interest in late prehistoric warfare, ritual, and iconography in the Eastern Woodlands.

From the reviews:"The volume edited by Chacon and David Dye is a comprehensive source book on trophy-taking in the Americas. ... carefully produced, thoroughly researched, and thoughtfully written, drawing on ethnohistory and archaeology in about equal measure. ... essential reading for anyone interested in the archaeology of war and violence." (Elizabeth Arkush, American Antiquity, Vol. 73 (3), 2008)"This volume of far ahead of many bioarcheological works...it should be the goal of the violence researcher (or any anthropologist for that matter) to not search for a single event that delineates and homogenizes a systematic function of a group (e.g. sacrifice, violence, or warfare) but rather try to understand how people are bound by events and processes that allow for a fluidity of responses to multiple stimuli. This volume moves in that direction by establishing skeletal and taphonomic studies in the Maya region that adhere to a rigorous methodology and that are systematically applied." (Ventura Perez, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, vol. 19 (566-571), 2009).