Horrifying Discovery: Shrunken Head Prop Used in 1970s Movie Turns Out to Be Human
An actual human head was once used as a prop in a film before being returned to its original place. The remains from a real corpse were used in the 1979 movie, Wise Blood, as per an article published by experts in Heritage Science.
The head was first brought to the U.S.A. in 1942 by a former faculty member at Mercer University, who found the secret artifact called tsantsa in Ecuador while serving in the U.S. military, Craig D. Byron and Adam M. Kiefer, from Georgia University revealed in the paper.
The faculty member got the tsantsa in exchange for his belongings like coins, a pocket knife, and a military insignia from the Chicham linguistic family (he described them as "Jivaros").
Before going into storage, the artifact was available for display at Mercer University's small cultural museum, the research paper stated.
The tsantsa were described as "cultural artifacts made from human remains by certain indigenous culture groups of Ecuador and Peru. Typically, male members of the Amazonian Shuar, Achuar, Awajún/Aguaruna, Wampís/Huambisa, and Candoshi-Shampra."
The groups made tsantsas using the skin of the enemies they had slain during combat, the research article stated. The belief was that tsantsa contained the spirit of the victim and all their knowledge, and gave supernatural abilities to anyone who possessed the artifact.
The artifacts were mostly used in social functions of indigenous cultures and "became monetarily valuable as keepsakes and curios during the nineteenth century as a result of Western/European cultural encroachment," according to the research article.
Since the availability was far less than the demand, many began to forge these artifacts, making it difficult for experts in the future to judge a tsantsa's authenticity.
In the movie, the head was attached to a fake tiny body and became the object of worship for one of the characters, People reported. Over the years, the scientists at Mercer University performed countless tests on the artifact that had been used as a prop to authenticate if it was a tsantsa.
The authors of the study then consulted the government of Ecuador for the process of repatriation and found that to return the artifact to its native place, they needed to prove its authenticity. The researchers made a list of thirty-three distinct characteristics shared by ceremonial tsantsas and compared them with the object in their custody.
Most of the characteristics were provided by Ecuador’s National Cultural Heritage Institute or discovered from prior academic literature, as per the research paper.
Notable skin and hair features, structure, facial anatomy, and evidence of traditional fabrication and modification were some of the features on the list. Eventually, the authors matched 30 of the 33 authenticating indicators in the list with the head.
The artifact was also scanned with a CT-imaging system, according to the article. The CT scan helped the researchers identify subtle and difficult-to-visualize characteristics of the skin and patterns of modification.
The results were submitted to the Ecuadorean government, and the artifact's authenticity as a tsantsa was confirmed, before it was returned in June 2019.
Byron told the Art Newspaper, "It's a relief to have the specimen out of our possession. It had 'underground' value; it was illegal to trade or sell; it was the skin from a person's head." He further added, "We had no business holding on to this item. It was a rewarding conclusion to a project hanging around since 2015."