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.
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" 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, and cannibalism. 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.
Southeast Asia
Headhunting was practiced in many parts of Southeast Asia. Among these groups, headhunting was an act of manhood; in the remote areas the taken heads were prized. 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 US 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 a Rockefeller scion was taken by headhunters in Irian Jaya as recently as 1961.
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 (George 1996). 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.
Amazon
The Shuar in Amazonian Ecuador and Peru practiced headhunting in order to make shrunken heads and keep them for ritual purposes. The practice is no longer current, but the Shuar still produce fake shrunken 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.
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