Reconstructing Ancient Head-Shaping Traditions from the Skeletal Record

Abstract

In archaeological record, the ancient tradition of head shaping is prone to leave tangible impressions in the skulls. The systematic examination of ancient skulls allows scholarship to recreate the modeling techniques and their morphological results, even in those past populations that have left no written record. This chapter reviews different typologies that have been employed in the classification of artificially modified crania of American, and specifically Mesoamerican, modeling techniques and modeling implements. I describe at length a cranial typology adapted from the taxonomy of José Imbelloni, an Italo-Argentinian anthropologist who originally proposed it 80 years ago. Today, this classification system is employed together with craniometrical criteria in most studies on Mesoamerican and Andean cranial modifications. Its standardized use benefits comparisons within and between areas and warrants inferences of Mesoamerican shaping techniques and implements, which are explored subsequently in this chapter. From here, broader bioarchaeological and contextual criteria are given that provide useful points of departure for inferring the social dimensions and temporal trends of past head-molding practices. Such are the skeletal attributes of sex and age and a set of associated mortuary attributes, materialized in the form of graves’ construction and offerings, architectural associations and orientation.

Now they are gone with all their songs and sins,Women and men, to dust; their copper penny,Of livings, spent, among these dusty inns;The glittering one made level with the many.

Their speech is gone, none speaks it, none can read The pictured writing of their conqueror’s march;The dropping plaster of fading screedCeils with its mildred the decaying arch.John Masefield (2005 [1920–1923], p. 96)