An artifact that had been placed on display for decades in a Georgia university has been authenticated as a human head taken from a slain enemy by an Amazonian warrior almost a century ago — and is now on its way back to where it came from.
Researchers say their tests show the object is what it was supposed to be — a genuine shrunken human head — opening the door to its return to Ecuador.May 11, 2021, 2:32 PM UTCA grim artifact that had been on display for decades in a Georgia university has been authenticated as a human head taken from a slain enemy by an Amazonian warrior almost a century ago — and it is now on its way back to where it came from.
"We wanted it to be viewed by people who could appreciate it in an appropriate context," said Mercer University chemist Adam Kiefer, a co-author of a study of the shrunken headMercer University biologist and anthropologist Craig Byron examines the tsantsa to verify its authenticity before it was repatriated to Ecuador."This is not an oddity — this is somebody's body, this is somebody's culture, and it's not ours," he said.
After several scientific tests, researchers established that the object was a human head, probably from a slain enemy.The researchers studied it using a variety of techniques, including computerized tomography, or CT, scans, which allowed them to reconstruct a three-dimensional model of the tsantsa both with and without its long hair.
The tsantsa was stuffed with a local newspaper to protect it during its transport from Ecuador to the United States in 1942.Harrison wrote in a memoir that he had traded with local people for the tsantsa."It was Indiana Jones," Kiefer said."When this was collected, science was different, everything was new ... but almost 80 years later, we recognize its cultural importance, along with the science.
In the U.S., the Smithsonian Institution has been repatriating human remains and other culturally important objects since the 1980s, particularly to Native American communities. It has repatriated more than 6,000 objects, including several tsantsas that were sent in 1999 to representatives of the indigenous Shuar people in Ecuador and Peru.
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