Scalping

Scalping is the act of cutting or tearing a part of the human scalp, with hair attached, from the head of an enemy as a trophy. Scalp-taking is considered part of the broader cultural practice of the taking and display of human body parts as trophies, and may have developed as an alternative to the taking of human heads, for scalps were easier to take, transport, and preserve for subsequent display. Scalping independently developed in various cultures in both the Old and New Worlds.

Georg Frederici noted in Scalping and Similar Warfare Customs in America that, “Herodotus provided the only clear and satisfactory portrayal of a scalping people in the old world”, in his description of the Scythians, a nomadic people then located to the north and west of the Black Sea.

Herodotus related that Scythian warriors would behead the enemies they defeated in battle and then present the heads to their king, in order to claim their share of the plunder. That done, the warrior “strips the skin off the head by making a circular cut round the ears and shaking out the skull; he then scrapes the flesh off the skin with the rib of an ox, and when it is clean works it with his fingers until it is supple, and fit to be used as a sort of handkerchief. He hangs these handkerchiefs on the bridle of his horse, and is very proud of them. The best man is the man who has the greatest number.” Ammianus Marcellinus noted the taking of scalps by the Alani, a people of Asiatic Scythia, in terms quite similar to those used by Herodotus.

The Abbé Emmanuel H. D. Domenech referenced the decalvare of the ancient Germans and the capillos et cutem detrahere of the code of the Visigoths as examples of scalping in early medieval Europe, though some more recent interpretations of these terms relate them to shaving off the hair of the head as a legal punishment rather than scalping.

The soldier of fortune, John Duncan observed, in 1845, what he estimated to be 700 scalps taken in warfare and displayed as trophies by a contingent of female soldiers — Dahomey Amazons — employed by the King of Dahomey (present-day Republic of Benin), noting that these would have been taken and kept over a long period of time and would not have come from a single battle. Although Duncan travelled widely in Dahomey, and described customs such as the taking of heads and the retention of skulls as trophies, nowhere else does he mention scalping.

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