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Full Text: Anthropos, 102.2007

480 
Reimar Schef° ld 
are we to explain certain striking commonalities in 
the reports of head-hunting practices in premodem 
times throughout the Southeast Asian region. In this 
article an attempt is made to explore an answer to 
this question. The past tense which is used through 
out most of its arguments indicates that I am not 
aiming at an essentialist constmction of a time 
less phenomenon, a phenomenon that in fact was 
subject to local transformations everywhere it oc 
curred. What I am in search of is an understanding 
of the ideological backgrounds of various recurring 
features reported to have been part of head-hunting 
practices before they were suppressed by the colo 
nial governments. 
Of course, there were also private rather than 
collective motives. There is a variety of statements 
that the soul of the person beheaded is supposed 
to serve the successful headhunter or some promi 
nent member of the community here and in the 
Hereafter. 3 * Local elaborations of this idea include 
certain Southeast Asian construction rituals which 
alternatively involve the killing of a captive slave 
from outside the domain or the providing of a head 
hunting trophy. The souls of the victims are said 
to become guardians; they are ritually prompted 
to protect the structure and its inhabitants (see 
Wessing and Jordaan 1997). However, such ani 
mistic elaborations are too sporadic to shed light 
on Southeast Asian head-hunting in general. 
2 Reasons for Head-Hunting 
in Southeast Asia 
Did there ever exist any specific aims and goals 
which motivated people to embark on a head-hunt 
ing raid? An ethnographical survey soon reveals 
that there are no general answers to this question to 
be found. There are nearly always concrete reasons 
for taking a head, but these are so diverse that it 
is instead this phenomenon as such which needs 
explanation. Fertility, for instance, is often men 
tioned, in a marriage or for the crops; there is the 
death of a chief, there is the averting of disaster, 
and, of course, there is retaliation. In more general 
terms, the idea that new life requires the taking of 
life recurs. However, one particular theme, to which 
I shall come back later, has a pervasive prominence: 
The motivation of a headhunt being coincident with 
the completion of a communal building. From ev 
ery corner of the area there are reports of captured 
3 See Stohr (1965: 198) and for early sources Schuster (1956: 
64-69) and Downs (1977: 117). 
heads being buried under the foundations of saC 
major constructions (see Schuster 1956: 70-82)- 
This profusion of aims elicits a second questi 013 ’ 
What is the basis of this many-stranded ritual e 
ficacy attributed to head-hunting? In other 
what warrants the confidence that there is hop e 
attaining whatever the headhunt is aimed to acco# 1 
plish? Why do Southeast Asians believe that t 
capturing of a head from outside one’s own 
main induces propitious consequences of the n tu 
at home? 
In contrast to the second question, scanting 
not diversity marks the answers to this question 
anthropological literature. Rodney Needham, in , 
often quoted article of 1976, departs from Kr^y 
(1906:18; see also Nooy-Palm 1986:318) 
known explanation that the “soul-substance” w 
lestof) of a slain enemy can be captured by f 
ing his head and can be used to effectuate fe rtl1 ^ 
and other beneficial influences. Against this B ene ^ 
theory, and taking the reports about the Keny 
Dayak by Elshout (1926) as an example, Needh ^ 
demonstrates that it has not proved possible to P 
duce direct evidence of indigenous notions poim 
in the direction of such a general explanation ( ^ 
also Metcalf 1982: 113). Indeed, a closer reading ^ 
Elshout and other authors reveals that, according.^ 
their informants and despite their own Kruyti aI3 
terpretations, in most instances it is not the tr°P n . j 
themselves which are said to elicit the benen 
effects. 
At this point, Needham’s argumentation — ^ 
surprising turn. His failure to find an indig eil< ^ 
tak eS ( 
theory such as that of the soul-substance to exp ^ 
“just how the cause produced the effect” (1976- 
brings him to the conclusion that what we are s® ^ 
gling with is in fact not a lack of sufficient 
information. It is instead an example of a ^ 
for which we have to accept the existence of a 131 jt 
of thought which is alien to European traditi 0 ^’’ 
represents an “alternative conception of causa ^d 
(1976: 71) in which something can cause an 6 
without any intermediary element in between- 
nothing but the tacit preconceptions of the an ^ 
pologist, triggered by a contemporaneous sC '■$ 
tific idiom derived from physics” (1976: 82) ^ 0 { 
inspires the researchers to assume the existen ^ ^ 
a quasi-physical mediating agent which reafi 205 
desired result. . 
Although Needham is probably right in p o1 
out the circumstantial tinges in Kruyt’s i n | a ijc£ 
theory, his alternative assumption of ass ° c ^ t ^ 1 ’ 
head-hunting with an alien causality seems ^ 
odd to me. Firstly it should be said that 
is somewhat categorical in denying any use 
102 
Anthropos
	        
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