Sep 3, 2021
Though not unique to Melanesia, the widespread practice of ‘headhunting’ has long repulsed (and fascinated) foreigners. In 1901, a British missionary, Harry Moore Dauncey, estimated seeing 10,000 skulls while accompanying a punitive raid of the Papuan island Goaribari (itself a reprisal for the islanders’ murder and consumption of missionaries). In his 1914 study of Melanesian society, the anthropologist W.H.R. Rivers noted that the ‘skull-cult’ was particularly prominent on the Solomon Islands: ‘As the symbol of a person … skulls of enemies have become the chief object of warfare.’ As seen here, veneration of skulls was still ‘alive’ in the late 20th century.
Rhys Griffiths, ‘National Gallery: Melanesia’, History Today