Headhunting

This is about headhunting as a tribal practice. For other uses, see Headhunter (disambiguation).

A headhunter was a person who killed another and then took their head. Headhunting was practiced in parts of Nigeria, the Balkan peninsula, Nurestan, Assam, Myanmar, Borneo, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Micronesia and Melanesia, New Zealand and the Amazon. It is a universally prohibited practice which appears to have died out as of the mid-20th century. In ancient Europe, head-hunting was also widespread among the Celts.

Headhunting was a ceremonial activity. It appears to be defunct in most societies that used it in the precolonial era. As a practice, it is a subject of intense discussion within the anthroplogical community as to its possible social roles, functions and motivations. Some believe that it was practiced because of a belief that the head contained "soul matter" or life force that could be harnessed through the 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. Headhunting was part of the process of structuring, reinforcing and defending hierarchical relationships between communities and individuals.

In the past, headhunters tended to be stereotypically portrayed in cartoons and comedy films as bloodthirsty primitives whose acts were devoid of reason. This portrayal is inaccurate. It was a complex institution which played an important role in the structure and viability of the societies in which it was practiced.

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Southeast Asia

Headhunting was practiced in many parts of Southeast Asia. Anthropological writings exist on the Ilongot , Iban, Dayak, Berawan , Wana, and mappurondo , and others. Among these groups, headhunting was usually a ritual activity, rather than an act of war or feuding, involving 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 wrapped up in the practice and the taken heads were prized.

Kenneth George (1996) wrote about annual headhunting rituals currently take place among the mappurondo religious minority, and 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 men to diplay manhood, distribute communal resources, and resist outside pressures to abandon mappurondo lifeways.

Around the 1930s, headhunting was suppressed among the Taiwanese aborigines during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and among the Ilongot in the Philippines by the U.S. 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.

It is believed that Michael Rockefeller may have been taken by headhunters in Irian Jaya as recently as 1961.

Amazon

The Shuar in Amazonian Ecuador and Peru practiced headhunting in order to make shrunken heads and use them for ritual purposes. The practice is no longer current, but the Shuar still produce replica heads which they sell to tourists.

New Zealand

In what is now known as New Zealand, the Maori would preserve the heads of enemies, removing the skull and smoking the head. Maori are currently attempting to reclaim the heads of their ancestors held in museums in other parts of the world.

References

Kenneth George (1996). Showing signs of violence: The cultural politics of a twentieth-century headhunting ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-52020-041-1