Bones in the rebel lady's boudoir

Ethnology, race and trophy-hunting in the American Civil War

Bibliographic Data

ID2390953
AuthorsHarrison (0000-0001-5614-8715, University of Ulster, corresponding author), Simon Harrison (0000-0002-2383-8995)
Year2010
Volume15
Issue4
Pages385-401
Publication date2010-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183510382960
OpenAlexW2106866957
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited34

This article discusses the collection and use of enemy skulls and other bones as trophies by soldiers and their supporters in the American Civil War. This behaviour was condemned at the time as that of 'savages'. However, the author argues that it was a local symptom of the shifts taking place after the Enlightenment in the ways in which human diversity was conceptualized. Civil War soldiers who collected and displayed their enemies' remains did so for some of the same reasons that comparative anatomists had begun to collect, display and study such objects at the time. They, too, assumed that the fundamental material evidence of human differences lay under the skin, in the bones and, above all, in the skull

Adversary · Archaeology · Diversity (politics · Enlightenment · Race (biology · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Trophy · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies