There can sometimes be a sense that the distant past was a relatively peaceful place compared to the modern world. It is certainly comforting to imagine ancient peoples conducting their lives in a more amicable manner. Looking a little deeper, though, reveals a darker side to the past, which could be every bit as bloody and horrifying as the massacres staining more recent centuries. Archaeological research demonstrates that ancient communities could face brutal treatment that sometimes ended in carnage. The south coast of Peru was no exception to this brutality, with excavations at the ancient settlement of Amato revealing disquieting details about the circumstances surrounding an episode of mass decapitation.
Head hunters
As is well known, the deliberate removal of people’s heads has occurred at many different times and places around the world, for motives as varied as combat trophies, ritual belief, and criminal punishment. Examples include Aztec skull racks (tzompantli), and the headhunters once active in parts of Celtic Europe and Southeast Asia. In the central Andes region of South America, the earliest signs of human decapitation date back to pre-ceramic times (before c.2000 BC). It is during the period known as the Early Intermediate (c.50 BC – AD 600), though, that evidence for beheading becomes more prevalent on the south coast of Peru than anywhere else in western South America.
In the central Andes, the German archaeologist Max Uhle is credited as the first researcher to have documented severed human heads that were described as ‘trophies’. Since then, such modified body parts have been identified in all the river valleys along the Peruvian south coast, including the Acari valley. These human heads can occur individually, in small groups, or as much larger concentrations. Transforming a head into a trophy did not simply entail detaching it from the rest of the body. Instead, a hole was inserted in the frontal bone of the skull, while at its base an oval opening known as the foramen magnum was artificially enlarged. Archaeological traces of the tradition are not restricted to the heads themselves, as images also appear on ceramics and textiles produced along the Peruvian south coast during the Early Intermediate period. On occasion, these heads are gripped by masked and elegantly dressed individuals, who can be recognised as mythical creatures.
