The present status of shrunken heads

While many of the shrunken heads displayed in museums and private collections today are counterfeit; real human heads were actually used in the shrinking process of some recent specimen. Taxidermists got their raw material from corpses of the unclaimed hospital dead and morgues and made a quick profit by reselling it as tsantsa. The first reference to this profitable form of taxidermy was in 1872, when a white man living on the border near the Shuar learned their method of preparation. In the thirties, an Ecuadorian doctor made a side business of shrinking human heads. He is also known to have shrunk two entire bodies, which used to be on display in the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

It has come to the author's attention that there is in Panama a man who makes a business of preparing and shrinking heads, and who has even shrunken two entire bodies, one of an adult, the other evidently of a child; the body of the latter only ten by twelve inches. These heads, human or otherwise, are much more skillfully prepared than the legitimate work of the Jivaros. The slit in the legitimate Jivaro head is drawn together with a very coarse fibre, while the work of this expert is so neatly done that the incision can hardly be noticed. The heads are those of white men, black men, Chinese men and natives, probably selected from unclaimed hospital dead. In Europe the author has also run across these heads which evidently must have come from the same source. In Panama, where tourists have created a brisk demand for these uncouth curios, heads, either human or monkey, are made to order or sold for $25.00 each. ( F.W Up de Graff -1897)

Real Jivaro tsantas usually feature the long black hair that has always been considered a prized attribute by head collectors. Their lips and eyelids are sealed with jungle fiber, and they have the dark facial color of well-cooked meat.

Imitation tsanta are classified under two categories: being either non-human or human but not Jivaro-made. In order to identify genuine shrunken heads, careful inspection is required. The following illustrates the most common characteristics of how to distinguish between authentic Jivaro shrunken heads and counterfeit shrunken heads.

Counterfeit heads prepared by someone other than the Jivaro Indians are usually, much more skillfully prepared through the use of superior equipment, than the actual work of the Jivaros. The head is less thoroughly shrunk and tends to exude a certain amount of oil. The lips show no sign of perforation which results from the "chonta-wood" pins used by the Shuar during the preparation, as well as the lips are sewn with light threads instead of a heavy cotton string. The top of the head is not pierced for the suspending cord. The facial hair has not been singed off, or the skin polished .

The most common non-human fakes are often made out of goat or monkey skin. Goat skin fitted over a form worked quite well, as the hair could then be shaved away to leave eyebrows and eyelashes. One must look for nasal hairs which are present only on authentic heads and pay attention to the ears. The ear should remain in its original form only smaller. Fakes generally cannot match the intricate details of the human ear.