Heads, Women, and the Baubles of Prestige

Maschner, Herbert D. G.; Reedy-Maschner, K

doi:10.1007/978-0-387-48303-0_3

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The Native American tribes that employed this practice recognized the correlation between it and one’s contribution on the battlefield. They explicitly identified individual ability and success in battle with the number of scalps collected during the conflict (Maschner and Reedy-Maschner, 2007: 33) and tied compensation to this measure. The taking of scalps was “an important element in male status advancement” (Axtell and Sturtevant, 1980: 461).…”

Section: Explaining Scalp-takingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scalp-taking

Piano

Carson

2019

Rationality and Society

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At their arrival in North America, travelers from the Old Continent were exposed to a radically different civilization. Among the many practices that captured their imagination was scalp-taking. During a battle, the Native American warrior would often stop after having killed or subdued the enemy and cut off his scalp. In this article, we develop an economic theory of this gruesome practice. We argue that scalp-taking constituted an institutional solution to the problem of monitoring warriors’ behavior in the battlefield under conditions of high information costs.

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Section: Explaining Scalp-takingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scalp-taking

Piano

Carson

2019

Rationality and Society

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“…Moreover, evidence of trauma in the skeleton does not necessarily indicate violence against the living. Such damage can also occur after death, whether through dismemberment or through the removal of body parts as trophies (Duncan, 2005;Maschner & Reedy-Maschner, 2007;Mensforth, 2007). Nonetheless, the frequency, morphology and distribution of trauma in the skeleton can often be used to identify the type of injury sustained and the types of violent encounters that might have resulted in those injuries (Tung, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Violence and Trophy Taking: A Case Study of Head and Neck Trauma in Two Individuals from the Gant Site (3MS11)

Thomas

Buchanan

Wilson³

et al. 2015

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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In collaboration with Carrie V. Wilson, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) Director for the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, researchers at Indiana University undertook a comprehensive study of NAGPRA collections from the Gant site (3MS11), a pre‐Columbian village site in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Following non‐destructive, macroscopic analysis of skeletal material, evidence of violent trauma was identified in two young adult men from the site. In one individual, the trauma was likely perimortem, and the morphology and distribution of lesions were found to be consistent with trophy taking documented in the ethnohistory and archaeology of the region. In the second individual, the trauma was survived, indicated by lesions attributed to healing on the occipital squama and hyoid. The relationship between the violence identified in this study and other violence in the archaeological and ethnohistoric record of the region is discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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