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Apologies to regular readers this week,
I am under a 'press deadline' for the writing of an anthropological
project whose text I must e-mail to the USA next week. So
unfortunately there is not enough time this week, nor possibly
next week to continue filling you in on the ins and outs of
Europe's attempts to try and prohibit the medicinal use of
extracts from the root of the South Pacific kava plant (piper
methysticum). This will have to wait until until I have finished
the anthropological text on ... overmodelled skulls (!).
The above-mentioned project is to be published
as the first scientific worldwide and historical study of
overmodelled skulls. It will not, of course, be a best-seller,
but then most academic texts are not supposed to be nor are
meant to be (and real anthropologists don't really 'work'
for money anyway as they are so impassioned with interest
and fascination for the vast panoply of human behavioural
variation that they don't really class their 'work' as work,
nor do it with the main aim of financial benefit - which is
why many institutions take advantage of them). It is a bit
like 'missionary work' but sometimes on the other side of
that cultural fence. The more we can gain insights into the
immense varieties of human social and cultural behaviour throughout
history and around the world today, the more we may be able
to understand where we may come from and where we may be headed.
With the way so many things seem to be going in the world
today, if we are not careful, we may unfortunately end up
where we seem to be headed - with much of the 'developed world's'
population forced to work really to pay off debts and bank
loans, many big multi-national companies raking in money as
if there were no tomorrow (Enron, etc, excepted! - but do
not be fooled, Enron's 'mistakes' were not that unusual, 'creative
accounting' is a rather well-known and widespread practice
in our modern world ) and by smart 'financial management'
minimizing their taxes. The 'Developing World' (‘developing
to what?') seemingly mired in a vicious cycle of poverty and
debt. The really lucky ones, in a way, are those very isolated
societies - and 'tribes' - who are still so isolated that,
if our 'modern world' disappeared, they would not notice it's
passing. There are, luckily, still some parts of the world
like that.
A note about 'overmodelled skulls'. Throughout
human history we have used human skulls in many ways. One
rather unusual (maybe to us, but not to certain other cultures)
skull technique consists of remodelling the features of the
deceased person onto his or her skull, sometimes in clay,
sometimes in other materials. Possibly the oldest (so far
found) overmodelled skulls are those found archaeologically
in early historical levels in what is now Jericho - human
skulls overmodelled with plaster features from eight thousand
years ago. Many of these Jericho skulls had been 'deformed',
i.e. shaped artificially by cranial manipulation when the
individual was very young and the bones were still soft. In
many areas of the world - but not all - skull overmodelling
took place within cultures where cranial manipulation was
an accepted and admired cultural trait. Overmodelled skulls
are found historically in many areas of the world - the early
Middle East, certain examples from Ancient Egypt, parts of
early Peru, early Eastern Europe and certain early Southeast
Asian cultures, to name but a few. For most cultures this
was obviously a religious practice and certain Catholic societies
in Western Europe treated human skulls in such a way well
into the early 19th century (Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland
were particularly well known for rather bizarre treatment
of certain human skulls). The practice of skull overmodellage
survived until very recently in certain areas of Papua New
Guinea (especially in parts of the Sepik River area) and in
certain very isolated areas, still does. But practically the
last area of the world where skull deformation (I prefer to
call it 'beautification' - and don't forget, such 'beautification'
was widespread in Ancient Egypt, Nefertiti possibly being
the best known example to us) and skull overmodellage still
persists, or is well within recent living memory, is on the
southern part of the island of Malakula in Vanuatu in the
Southwest Pacific. I have been working with these societies
for nearly 30 years, so the practice for me seems perfectly
natural. It is for this reason that I have been told that
my section of this forthcoming academic text is the critical
one. However, there may be certain traditional sacred aspects
that my friends on the island of Malakula wish to retain secret,
and so I will not write about those. I must respect the laws
of their cultures and there exists certain information that
is 'copyrighted', so that only particular individuals, or
clans, within their society have the rights over it. 'Copyright'
is not a Euro-American invention; forms of it have been around
in certain parts of the world for longer than some of our
own countries have existed.
A small note about 'skull elongation'/deformation/beautification.
Do not make the mistake that 'only tribes' did or do that.
The practice was, for example, actually quite widespread in
certain peasant areas of France right up until the 19th century
and there were quite a few French peasants with artificially
modified skulls still living at the end of the 19th century
and some were still alive into the early years of the 20th
century. A certain French medical photographer amassed quite
a collection of photographic portraits of such living peasants
between 1875 - 1912. Some of these photographs were displayed
in the Australian Museum's 'Body Art' exhibition in Sydney
two years ago, specifically to make the public aware that
such practices are not just confined to the 'isolated' areas
of the world, but that forms of them are also often part and
parcel of 'our' own cultural heritage. I had notified the
exhibition organizers of the existence of these photos and
my now wife (she wasn't then) - who was working on the exhibition
preparation - made sure they were included in the displays.
Kirk W Huffman
kirkwhuffman@ibizahistoryculture.com
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