Trophy Taking in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley

Trophy taking is the act of removing human body parts from a living or recently deceased victim or foe, when the body part functions as a souvenir that marks the act of conquering or controlling another human being or human group. Trophy taking can be used as an act of revenge between certain factions of people, or to prove to a superior that a killing has been carried out. But the practice can also be done as a component of war, whether ritualized or as an impulse, done in the passion of the moment. Trophy taking has been done for thousands of years, and is still practiced in today’s world in some circumstances. The purposes of this chapter are to first review the criteria for evaluating whether or not a human remain should be considered as a legitimate trophy when found in an archaeological context. Second, some previously unpublished cases of decapitation and cannibalism from the central and lower Mississippi Valley, plus a site with one feature exhibiting multiple scalping and decapitation cases from southeastern Tennessee, will be presented. The final section is a review of sites in the continental United States where trophy taking and/or cannibalism has been verified, using the criteria established in the early part of the chapter. This review will demonstrate that trophy taking had two discrete origins in the United States, first from a temporal and second from a spatial standpoint, and that the practice spread across cultural areas on a timeline.