Concept: Headhunting

Details

Headhunting raises unpleasant images today, and needs to be understood within the context of cultural traditions which developed over many centuries. It involved basic religious practices which bound together the living and the dead. The system evolved in the period before any contact with the outside world. Headhunting related to achieving and maintaining power and authority, exhibited in the acquisition of trophy skulls. The skulls and their appropriation became the material signs of traditional power and rank exhibited by chiefs, a sign that their ancestors supported them. Headhunting evolved as a form of ritualised warfare which operated at the same time as trading: headhunting achieved Roviana's political and military dominance; trading ensured economic dominance and alliances across the region.


Headhunting may have been practiced for thousands of years, before the inception of the dominant Roviana Lagoon cultural complex on New Georgia that fuelled it in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century headhunting was practiced mainly by people of Roviana who from the 1860s to the 1900s raided in the New Georgia area and surrounding islands. On Isabel, such was the rate of attacks for heads and slaves that the population was decimated; some communities built watch-houses high in trees. Similar raids depopulated Choiseul. However, the Roviana people and those around Munda and Saikile were themselves raided by parties from Rendova, Vella Lavella and Marovo Lagoon. This involved complex confederated military alliances that changed over time. The major Roviana allies were from Kolombangara, Ughele in Rendova, and Kuboro in Choiseul and Kia in north Isabel. New Georgia war parties travelling in tomoko (war canoes) raided neighbouring populations such as Lokuru (Rendova), Kusaghe (north New Georgia), several groups in Marovo Lagoon (such as Vangunu and Gatokae) and Tetepare; and further afield in places such as Choiseul, Isabel, Nggela, Savo, the Russell Islands, Guadalcanal and north Malaita. Expeditions could be small and acts of localised revenge by hired assassins, or substantial expeditionary war parties hired to kill rival, dominant warriors and destroy whole village groups. The raiders also took slaves, usually women and children, for use in rituals and for prostitution, although if they survived they could become incorporated into New Georgia society. Payments for procuring skulls and slaves were usually made in shell-ring valuables (bakiha and poata) and chiefs accumulated large 'banks' of these items (nibaka) to pay the raiders. The number of heads obtained in single raids was often high: Andrew Cheyne counted ninety-three heads taken in one 1844 raid on Simbo, and Charles Woodford in the 1880s recorded thirty-one heads taken in a raid from Roviana. (Aswani 2000b; 2008, 185)


Headhunting was also carried out on other islands, and some of the headhunting in the south seems not to have been by Roviana people. For instance, in the early 1870s Dikea, a Nggela bigman, used to raid Malaita to add to his head collection, and on Isabel in the 1870s and 1880s Bera, then known as the main headhunting chief, raided across to Guadalcanal. Although the increase in raiding in the second half of the nineteenth century was related to the increased availability of guns and metal axes, in no way was headhunting a product of this intrusion of foreign goods. One of the primary reasons a Protectorate administrative base was established at Gizo in 1899 was to stop headhunting through a para-military operation. The end of headhunting came quickly, but government attacks were only one factor; also important were the arrival of missionaries in the 1900s and a wider refocusing of trade and social circumstances. (Fox 1958, 179-81, 189; McKinnon 1975; Boutilier 1973; Aswani 2000a; 2000b; Sheppard, Walter and Nagaoka 2000; Dureau 2000; McDougall 2000; Waite 2000; Aswani and Sheppard 2003)

Published resources

Books

  • Fox, Charles E., Lord of the Southern Isles: Being the Story of the Anglican Mission in Melanesia, 1849-1949, Mowbray, London, 1958. Details

Book Sections

  • Aswani, Shankar, 'Forms of Leadership and Violence in Malaita and in the New Georgia Group, Solomon Islands', in Pamela J. Stewart;Andrew Strathern (ed.), Forms of Leadership and Violence in Malaita and in the New Georgia Group, Solomon Islands, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2008, pp. 171-194. Details

Conference Papers

  • Boutilier, James A., 'The Supression of Head-Hunting in the Western Solomon Islands', in Annual Meeting of the Assocoiation for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Victoria, British Columbia, 1973. Details

Edited Books

  • Aswani, Shankar (ed.), Journal of the Polynesian Society: Essays on Head-hunting in the Western Solomon Islands, vol. 109, 2000a. Details

Journal Articles

  • Aswani, Shankar, 'Changing Identities: the Ethnohistory of Roviana Predatory Headhunting', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 109, no. 1, Polynesian Society, Auckland, 2000b, pp. 39-70. Details
  • Aswani, Shankar, and Sheppard, Peter, 'The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Exchange in Precolonial and Colonial Roviana: Gifts, Commodities, and Inalienable Possessions', Current Anthropology, vol. 44, Supplement, 2003, pp. S51-S78. Details
  • Dureau, Christine, 'Skulls, Mana and Causality', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 109, no. 1, 2000, pp. 71-98. Details
  • McDougall, Debra, 'Paths of Pinauzu: Captivity and Social Reproductions in Ranongga', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 109, no. 1, 2000, pp. 99-114. Details
  • McKinnon, J.M., 'Tomahawks, Turtles and Traders: A Reconstruction in the Circular Causation of Warfare in the New Georgia Group', Oceania, vol. 45, no. 4, 1975, pp. 290-307. Details
  • McKinnon, J.M., 'Tomahawks, Turtles and Traders: A Reconstruction in the Circular Causation of Warfare in the New Georgia Group', Oceania, vol. 45, no. 4, 1975, pp. 290-307. Details
  • Sheppard, Peter, Walter, Richard, and Nagaoka, Takuyu, 'The Archaeopogy of Head-Hunting in Roviana Lagoon', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 109, no. 1, 2000, pp. 9-38. Details
  • Waite, Deborah, 'An Artefact/Image Text of Head-hunting Motifs', Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 109, no. 1, 2000, pp. 115-133. Details