Finger Amputation in the Ethnohistoric, Archaeological, and Folktale Records

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Body Modification: Examples and Explanations" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

To many people in the West, the idea that finger amputation would be carried out for nonmedical reasons is unheard of. However, recent studies suggest that it may have been quite common in the past. The aim of the study presented here was to shed some light on the prevalence of finger amputation customs. To accomplish this, we examined textual and material evidence of finger amputation practices. We first recorded mentions of finger amputation customs in ethnohistoric texts. A total of 181 ethnohistoric groups were found to have engaged in such customs. Next, we searched for mentions of finger amputation in folktales. We found that folktales associated with 64 groups featured finger amputation. Thereafter, we reviewed six types of material evidence suggestive of finger amputation from 104 sites. The types of evidence we documented included isolated phalanges in contextually significant deposits, finger necklaces, skeletal individuals with missing phalanges and evidence of healed amputations, impressions of hands with amputated fingers, and incomplete hand images. Overall, we identified 245 cultures with either textual or material evidence for finger amputation. The results of our study demonstrate that finger amputation has been a surprisingly common practice globally and for thousands of years.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Body Modification: Examples and Explanations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36304.0