Shrunken head

For 1994 film, see Shrunken Heads (film).

Shrunken heads in the permanent collection of "Ye Olde Curiosity Shop", Seattle, Washington state, U.S. These are probably a mix of real and fake.

A shrunken head is a severed and specially prepared human head that is used for trophy, ritual, or trade purposes.

Headhunting has occurred in many regions of the world. But the practice of headshrinking has only been documented in the northwestern region of the Amazon rain forest, and the only tribes known to have shrunken human heads are of the Jivaroan tribes. These include the Shuar, Achuar, Huambisa and Aguaruna tribes, found in Ecuador and Peru. The Shuar call a shrunken head a tsantsa, also transliterated tzantza.

Process

Shrunken head from the Shuar people, on display in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

The process of creating a shrunken head begins with removing the skull from the head. An incision is made on the back of the neck and all the skin and flesh is removed from the cranium. Red seeds are placed underneath the eyelids and the eyelids are sewn shut. The mouth is held together with three palm pins. Fat from the flesh of the head is removed. It is here that a wooden ball is placed in order to keep the form. The flesh is then boiled in water that has been saturated with a number of herbs containing tannins. The head is then dried with hot rocks and sand, while molding it to retain its human features. The skin is then rubbed down with charcoal ash. Decorative beads may be added to the head.

In the head shrinking tradition, it is believed that coating the skin in ash keeps the muisak, or avenging soul, from seeping out.

Shrunken heads are known for their mandibular prognathism, facial distortion and shrinkage of the lateral sides of the forehead; these are artifacts of the shrinking process.

Among the Shuar and Achuar, the reduction of the heads was followed by a series of feasts centered on important rituals.

Significance

Shrunken head exhibited at the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, Florida.

The practice of preparing shrunken heads originally had religious significance; shrinking the head of an enemy was believed to harness the spirit of that enemy and compel him to serve the shrinker. It was said to prevent the soul from avenging his death.

Shuar believed in the existence of three fundamental spirits:

• Wakani – innate to humans thus surviving their death.
• Arutam – literally "vision" or "power", protects humans from a violent death.
• Muisak – vengeful spirit, which surfaces when a person carrying an arutam spirit is murdered.

To block a Muisak from using its powers, they severed their enemies' heads and shrank them. The process also served as a way of warning their enemies. Despite these precautions, the owner of the trophy did not keep it for long. Many heads were later used in religious ceremonies and feasts that celebrated the victories of the tribe. Accounts vary as to whether the heads would be discarded or stored.

Trade in shrunken heads

When Westerners created an economic demand for shrunken heads there was a sharp increase in the rate of killings in an effort to supply tourists and collectors of ethnographic items. The terms headhunting and headhunting parties come from this practice.

Guns were usually what the Shuar acquired in exchange for their shrunken heads, the rate being one gun per head. But weapons were not the only items exchanged. Around 1910, shrunken heads were being sold by a curio shop in Lima for one Peruvian gold pound, equal in value to a British gold sovereign. In 1919, the price in Panama's curio shop for shrunken heads had risen to £5. By the 1930s, when heads were freely exchanged, a person could buy a shrunken head for about twenty-five U.S. dollars. A stop was put to this when the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments worked together to outlaw the traffic in heads.

Also encouraged by this trade, people in Colombia and Panama unconnected to the Jívaros began to make counterfeit tsantsas. They used corpses from morgues, or the heads of monkeys or sloths. Some even used goatskin. Kate Duncan wrote in 2001 that "It has been estimated that about 80 percent of the tsantsas in private and museum hands are fraudulent," including almost all that are female or which include an entire torso rather than just a head.

Thor Heyerdahl recounts in Kon-Tiki (1947) the various problems of getting into the Jívaro (Shuar) area in Ecuador to get balsa wood for his expedition raft. Local people would not guide his team into the jungle for fear of being killed and having their heads shrunk. In 1951 and 1952 sales of such items in London were being advertised in The Times, one example being priced at $250, a hundredfold appreciation since the early twentieth century.

In 1999, the National Museum of the American Indian repatriated the authentic shrunken heads in its collection to Ecuador. Most other countries have also banned the trade. Currently, replica shrunken heads are manufactured as curios for the tourist trade. These are made from leather and animal hides formed to resemble the originals.

In popular culture

Shrunken head in the The Knight Bus, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal Orlando Resort).

• In the 1971 Night Gallery episode "Logoda's Heads," the title character, an African witch doctor, uses a collection of shrunken heads for diabolical purposes.
• In 1975, Whiting (a Milton Bradley company) released Vincent Price’s Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit.
• In James Rollins' novel Amazonia, Dr. Favre's Shuar mistress, Tshui, is described as a "witch" who concocts poisons, brews psychoactive tea, and maintains a large collection of shrunken heads. Her process of shrinking one such trophy, which she wears around her neck, is described in great detail.
• In Columbo: Grand Deceptions (1989) Lt Columbo comes across a shrunken head during his investigation. The shrunken head had no significant impact on the story line and was only mentioned to supplement the storyline.
• In "A Foot Too Big", an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a villain called Finger carries his mother's shrunken head and talks to it as if she is still alive.
• In the final scene of the movie Beetlejuice, the titular character manages to annoy a witch doctor to such an extent that the witch doctor shrinks his head as punishment, as both are waiting in an afterlife reception area.
• In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Lenny Henry voiced Dre Head, a Jamaican shrunken head on the magical Knight Bus.
• In the pinball machine Ripley's Believe It or Not! (pinball), There is a magnet under the talking shrunken head that takes the ball, holds it for a moment, then releases it to the back of the playfield.
• In the animated film Hotel Transylvania, Dracula (Adam Sandler) uses talking shrunken heads in each room's door.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Captain Jack Sparrow's father Edward Teague keeps Jack's mother in his pocket as a severed shrunken head.
• In James Ellroy's novel Perfidia, staff members in the L.A.P.D. begin to wear shrunken heads to celebrate the capture of 'the werewolf', Fujio Shudo.

References

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External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Head Hunting: History of the Shuar
• Picture of a shrunken head from the Buchenwald concentration camp
• Shrunken Heads Song