Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe

Across Iron Age Europe the human head carried symbolic associations with power, fertility status, gender, and more. Evidence for the removal, curation and display of heads ranges from classical literary references to iconography and skeletal remains. Traditionally, this material has been associated with a Europe-wide 'head-cult', and used to support the idea of a unified Celtic culture in prehistory. This book demonstrates instead how headhunting and head-veneration were practised across a range of diverse and fragmented Iron Age societies. Using case studies from France, Britain and elsewhere, it explores the complex and subtle relationships between power, religion, warfare and violence in Iron Age Europe.

Ian Armit is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bradford. The author of more than eighty academic articles, he has also written numerous books, including Anatomy of an Iron Age Roundhouse, Towers in the North: The Brochs of Scotland, and Celtic Scotland.