Trajectories of Human Skulls in Museum Collections

Bibliographic Data

ID23704702
AuthorsRicardo Roque (0000-0002-7507-2506)
Year2010
Pages103-126
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueHeadhunting and Colonialism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230251335_5
OpenAlexW2479012603
ISBN9780230251335
LanguageEN
References cited14

The preceding chapter described colonial headhunting in Timor as a circulatory system that interconnected European and indigenous societies. The ritual circuits of severed heads could empower the Portuguese and their allied Timorese communities. This close contact was also organized by boundaries of purity and dangers of pollution, and the Portuguese pragmatic principle of preservation of customs. Accordingly, severed heads as physical things were expected to circulate strictly within Timorese territories and to remain in the possession of Timorese communities. Thus, if the pace of colonial warfare in the nineteenth century increased and intensified the ritual circuits of decapitated heads, these tended to remain local, confined to the island. These ritual circuits, however, could be evaded, and severed heads re-networked in European circuits, outside of Timor. The following chapters of Part II will examine why and how that could succeed. This chapter initiates this inquiry with the analysis of two large consignments of Macanese and Timorese collections sent from Macao in 1880-82. The intention is to explain the travels of these collections as ‘trajectories’ of things attached to, or detached from, words. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Archaeology · Biology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Portuguese · Possession (linguistics) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Philosophy