An Overview of Forensic Trophy Skull Analysis in Montana

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Retaining a skeletal element, especially a skull, whether it be for ancestor veneration, social memory, or as a trophy, is a common practice throughout human history. Keeping a cranium can reflect a lot of information about cultural beliefs concerning death, war, and victory at specific points in time. It is more common than one might think to come across these "trophy skulls" in archaeological and forensic contexts. Most often, they come to us, as Forensic Anthropologists, through a Medical Examiner’s lab, usually under questionable or unknown circumstances. This poster reviews three separate cases of "trophy skulls" in Montana, including the findings of the biological profile analyses and the attempts to reconcile police reports and oral histories in order to reconstruct the life histories of the unknown individuals. The term of "trophy skull" is also approached from an anthropological viewpoint and an argument made for changing the terminology associated with these remains in an effort to better describe the likely circumstances of their creation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25259