Gruesome Shrunken Heads (Tsantsas)!

We spent the morning in Oxford before setting off for home. We visited the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is full of macabre artefacts from all over the world. Probably the most macabre are the shrunken heads, or tsantsas. These ones are from the forested Upper Amazon region between Peru and Ecuador. Traditionally men were encouraged to take enemy heads to prove their manhood and avenge the death of relatives; sometimes the heads of sloths or monkeys would be substituted for human heads.

Getting a good blip was tricky owing to reflections from the glass case, and the dim lighting. The typed label gives an idea of scale - these heads were shrunken to about 1/4 of their normal volume.

Gruesome or what?!

(Maybe best NOT viewed large...if you are squeamish!)