Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance

Harrison, Simon

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00365.x

Cited by 33 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Yet such objects were appropriated, and more commonly than in the war in Europe (Kahn 1993: 148; Manchester 1979: 313‐16; Sledge 1981: 133‐4, 151). Those who collected them did so not only for their own use as souvenirs, but also to barter or sell, mostly to rear‐echelon service troops, among whom there was a strong demand for such objects, in return for luxuries such as beer or whisky (Harrison 2006). As a result, only a minority of servicemen returned from the Pacific with mementos taken from bodies of soldiers whom they had personally killed, even though some passed off their war souvenirs as personal kill trophies back home.…”

Section: The Wartime Collection Of Souvenirsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This powerful metaphor of the war as a hunt or hunting expedition created expectations that servicemen would bring home trophies, tangible evidence of success. Such expectations were perhaps particularly strong among servicemen from backgrounds in which hunting played an important role in the symbolism of adult male identity, or national identity, as it did for some American and Australian personnel (Harrison 2006).…”

Section: The Wartime Collection Of Souvenirsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 6 Usually these remains are unidentifiable, so are repatriated to the Japanese authorities, not to the families (see Harrison 2006). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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War mementos and the souls of missing soldiers: returning effects of the battlefield dead

Harrison

2008

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article discusses acts of restitutive giving, a range of practices similar to the gift except that they express sociability by reaffirming between donors and recipients the existence of social boundaries rather than connections. The particular case discussed concerns military personnel in the major wars of the twentieth century, who took personal items from the enemy dead as battle trophies. Focusing on the Pacific War, the article explores the meaning of these objects for the servicemen who kept them, and the ways in which this meaning altered during their later lives. In particular, the article seeks to explain why some veterans in old age, or their families after their deaths, traced the original owners' surviving kin and returned the objects to them. Résumé Le présent article discute des actes de restitution, des pratiques proches du don à ceci près qu’elles expriment la sociabilité en réaffirmant entre celui qui donne et celui qui reçoit l’existence de frontières sociales plutôt que de liens. Le cas particulier discuté ici concerne des militaires ayant participé aux grands conflits armés du XXème siècle, qui avaient emporté comme trophées de guerre des biens personnels de leurs ennemis morts au combat. Dans le cas plus précis de la guerre du Pacifique, l’auteur explore la signification de ces objets pour les militaires qui les ont gardés, et la manière dont cette signification a changé par la suite au fil de leur vie. Il s’agit en particulier d’expliquer pourquoi certains anciens combattants, devenus vieux, ou leur famille après leur mort, ont recherché les parents survivants des anciens propriétaires de ces objets pour leur rendre ceux‐ci.

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Section: The Wartime Collection Of Souvenirsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Wartime Collection Of Souvenirsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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War mementos and the souls of missing soldiers: returning effects of the battlefield dead

Harrison

2008

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Simon Harrison (2006) has recently shown that not only have human skulls been used as trophies among some indigenous Amazonian, Southeast Asian, and Melanesian societies; he argues, that the trophy-taking practices among allied servicemen in the Pacific War closely resembled those one might find within traditional headhunting societies. The use of body parts, he argues, may occur in a wide variety of settings in which this type of imagery of predation is employed (Harrison 2006, 818).…”

Section: Pity and Terrormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this sense, the form of killing that he explores deviates from headhunting as it is known within the ethnographic literature. It has been a common assumption among anthropologists that headhunting and other forms of trophy taking of human body parts was related to either a problematic 'humanness' of neighbouring tribes (Mckinley 1976) or directly linked to dehumanizing practices (Harrison 2006(Harrison , 2012. In her treatise on beheadings, the historian Frances Larson points out that the 'physical detachment of a person's head is often preceded by an assumed social detachment that separates the perpetrator from the victim' (Larson 2014, 270).…”

Section: Pity and Terrormentioning

confidence: 99%

Facehunting: Empathy, Masculinity and Violence among the Bugkalot

Mikkelsen

2017

JEA

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This article discusses how anthropological explorations of empathy can be enriched through a focus on transgression. Empathy is commonly understood as a human capacity that allows a person to share the feelings of others through some form of mental engagement. Thereby, it is believed, empathy establishes compassionate relationships between people and prevents violence from breaking out. In this article, I suggest the opposite may be the case: in fact, empathy may be the very foundation for acts of radical violence and killings. The ethnographic basis of my inquiry is research conducted among the Bugkalot (Ilongot) of northern Philippines on the practice of headhunting. I propose that empathy is what allows violence to achieve its transformative capacity. Furthermore, I seek to show how understanding headhunting as 'murder' may disclose how this particular act is tied to masculine ideals of autonomy. Headhunting, I argue, targets not the head but the 'face,' that is, it strikes at the very fulcrum of the ethical relation and the foundation of empathy.

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Estimation and evidence in forensic anthropology: Sex and race

Konigsberg

Algee‐Hewitt

Steadman

2009

American J Phys Anthropol

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Forensic anthropology typically uses osteological and/or dental data either to estimate characteristics of unidentified individuals or to serve as evidence in cases where there is a putative identification. In the estimation context, the problem is to describe aspects of an individual that may lead to their eventual identification, whereas in the evidentiary context, the problem is to provide the relative support for the identification. In either context, individual characteristics such as sex and race may be useful. Using a previously published forensic case (Steadman et al. (2006) Am J Phys Anthropol 131:15-26) and a large (N = 3,167) reference sample, we show that the sex of the individual can be reliably estimated using a small set of 11 craniometric variables. The likelihood ratio from sex (assuming a 1:1 sex ratio for the "population at large") is, however, relatively uninformative in "making" the identification. Similarly, the known "race" of the individual is relatively uninformative in "making" the identification, because the individual was recovered from an area where the 2000 US census provides a very homogenous picture of (self-identified) race. Of interest in this analysis is the fact that the individual, who was recovered from Eastern Iowa, classifies very clearly with [Howells 1973. Cranial Variation in Man: A Study by Multivariate Analysis of Patterns of Difference Among Recent Human Populations. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; 1989. Skull Shape and the Map: Craniometric Analyses in the Dispersion of Modern Homo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. Easter Islander sample in an analysis with uninformative priors. When the Iowa 2000 Census data on self-reported race are used for informative priors, the individual is clearly identified as "American White." This analysis shows the extreme importance of an informative prior in any forensic application.

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Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance

Cited by 33 publications

References 19 publications

War mementos and the souls of missing soldiers: returning effects of the battlefield dead

War mementos and the souls of missing soldiers: returning effects of the battlefield dead

Facehunting: Empathy, Masculinity and Violence among the Bugkalot

Estimation and evidence in forensic anthropology: Sex and race

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