Heads of State

The human head has had important political ritual and symbolic meanings throughout Andean history. Scholars have spoken of captured and trophy heads curated crania symbolic flying heads head imagery on pots and on stone head-shaped vessels and linguistic references to the head. In this synthesizing work cultural anthropologist Denise Arnold and archaeologist Christine Hastorf examine the cult of heads in the Andes—past and present—to develop a theory of its place in indigenous cultural practice and its relationship to political systems. Using ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork highland-lowland comparisons archival documents oral histories and ritual texts the authors draw from Marx Mauss Foucault Assadourian Viveiros del Castro and other theorists to show how heads shape and symbolize power violence fertility identity and economy in South American cultures.