Head binding, a practice that involved deliberately reshaping the heads of infants, differed according to social status in ancient Peru, according a new report in academic journal Current Anthropology .
The report, which is based on the examination of 211 skulls from two different societies that lived in the Colca Valley in Peru, also used archaeological and carbon dating data that showed that this practice became increasingly prevalent between 1150 and 1450 AD.
Head binding was done either by covering the heads of infants with cloth or binding them between two pieces of wood.
The two ethnic groups studied were the Collaguas and the Cavanas.
“The Collaguas settled the upper reaches of the valley; they spoke Aymara, raised alpacas for wool, and made their heads long and narrow,” Matthew C. Velasco from the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University wrote in the report. “In contrast, the Quechua-speaking Cavanas cultivated maize in the fertile lower valley and compressed the heads of their newborns to make them squat and wide.”
The also had two different burial grounds — one for the Collaguas and one for the Cavanas. The report says that high-ranking officials were buried in special structures built on cliffs, while the common people were buried in caves. The elite burial sites showed skulls which were long and elongated compared to the ones in the caves, suggesting that higher ranked individuals had longer heads.
Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bones revealed that females with elongated heads ate better nutritional foods and had a lower risk for violence. This suggests that inequality prevailed even among females in the Colca valley.
“Further insights into the relationship among head shaping, social power, and regional mobility await the results of additional....analyses,” says the report.
