HEADS WE LOSE
The grim crew that calls itself ‘Islamic State’ has appalled the world with its beheadings and destruction of ancient sites. These two dreadful practices came together most starkly with the crew’s murder of Khaled al-Asaad, 83, since 1963 the guardian of antiquities for the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, and the considerable destruction wrought by it of parts of this remarkable site – notably the Temple of Bel (or Baal) dedicated in AD 32, and, even as this column is being written (October), the monumental arch erected under Septimius Severus (AD 193-211). Khaled al-Asaad would not swear allegiance to the jihadists nor tell them where precious artefacts were being hidden, for which bravery he was publically beheaded on 18 August and his body hung on a traffic light. Ironically, two recently announced archæological finds underline the fact that the grisly act of decapitation has been with us for a long, long time.
The oldest archæological evidence of beheading in the Americas has come to light in Brazil: what appears to have been the remains of a ritual decapitation of a young man have been uncovered in a rock shelter in Lapa do Santo (“saint’s rock shelter”), an area already known for its prehistoric finds and rock art. Eerily, the decapitated skull had an amputated right hand placed palm down on the left side of the face, with fingers pointing to the chin, and an amputated left hand placed palm down over the right side of the face with fingers pointing to the forehead, unusual details which make an already macabre find even more disturbing, and indicates a ritualised killing. What really astonished the international team of archæologists, though, is the dating of the remains to before 7,000 BC. The headhunting predilections of various cultures and tribes in the ancient Americas is of course well known (the Arara people in the Brazilian Amazon used skulls of conquered enemies as musical instruments, for instance, and the Inca turned skulls into drinking vessels), but no one had guessed that the practice of decapitation started there so far back in time. LiveScience, 23 Sept 2015 (original paper in PLOSone, 23 Sept 2015).
Ghoulish archæological finds of a similar kind can be made on this side of the Atlantic too, as testified by discoveries in the remote ‘Sculptor’s Cave’, halfway up the sea cliffs overlooking the Moray Firth in Scotland. Remains there from the late Bronze Age show evidence for (hopefully already) dead children having had their heads cut off for display in the entrance. The cave appears to have been used for rituals by the somewhat mysterious tribal people known to us as Picts, who survived into the early centuries of the historical era. The announcement of this find at this year’s British Science Festival caused particular media interest because the cave is in a remote part of the Gordonstoun estate, location of the public school where Prince Charles and other royal children had part of their education. Mail Online, 15 Sept 2015.
(Interestingly, the 21ft (6.5m) monolith known as Sueno’s Stone stands in the general district of the Gordonstoun estate. This is the largest surviving carved Pictish stone, and among its mass of imagery is a detail depicting several decapitated bodies – probably enemies beheaded after a battle.)