Ian Armit’s fascinating and provocative new study offers a critical re-evaluation of Celtic ‘headhunting’. He tackles the complex legacy of the classical authors in the heartland in which accounts of this practice were written – the French Midi – arguing for a more subtle, contextually specific understanding of how headhunting developed and changed in meaning over time. This is the most rewarding and ground-breaking part of the book, drawing together diverse sources: from texts to archaeological sites and features, portable material culture, architecture, sculpture, art and iconography. He also re-evaluates the usefulness of early medieval literature, historic folklore and recent ethnography to furnish ‘fresh ideas and approaches’, and suggest new ‘connections and meanings’ (p 10). In particular, his survey of the anthropology of headhunting makes this study of international and interdisciplinary significance.

The book begins with a discussion of the phenomenon using key concepts drawn from anthropology. He defines headhunting as ‘a form of group-sanctioned, ritualised violence, in which the removal of the human head plays a central role’ (p 11), going on to argue it is ‘perhaps the most appallingly brutal act that can be perpetrated against the human body’ (p 47). However, the ethnography enables him to put forward a novel proposal that there is a fundamental association between heads, fertility and regenerative power, which he goes on to demonstrate with artful skill, through a range of different archaeological contexts.

Armit outlines a range of possible motivations for headhunting: judicial execution or post mortem dismemberment of criminals or prisoners (not an avenue which merits extensive further discussion); violent peri mortem decapitation of enemies, outsiders or political rivals (usually employed within the predatory trope of ‘trophy taking’); strategic, premeditated sacrifice; or ritualised veneration of ancestral or cult figures, where remains are curated as part of secondary mortuary rites. (The surprise revelation in the postscript on the Cnip wheelhouse cranium demonstrates that even ‘ancient’ ancestors, reclaimed from time-out-of-mind, might qualify for such treatment!) However, as Armit goes on to argue, it is often difficult to distinguish archaeologically between the venerated head of an ancestor, the offering of a worthy sacrifice or the triumphal display of an enemy’s head: all kinds of heads may be elaborately displayed, framed within impressive architectural or sculptural settings.

Yet Armit tries to move close to identifying such distinctions through the particular visual grammar of iconography: aspects of individualised representation (as in the Entremont carved blocks, distinguished by facial features or hairstyle and interpreted by Armit as the possible depiction of genealogies) in contrast to a more stereotyped depiction of the anonymous ‘dead’ head (closed or puffy eyes, a simple flat or downturned mouth and lack of fleshy elements such as nose or ears). He also uses the context of their display to explore possible differences. The skulls nailed or clamped to beams at La Cloche are interpreted as irreverent trophyism, possibly relating to a deposed elite, and the in situ decapitations of adults and juveniles at Sculptor’s Cave, Scotland, are similarly discussed as a brutal and intimidating execution event in a dank arena already decorated with heads of the ancient dead: poised between this world and the next. Yet Armit questions the interpretation of differential display and decay at Ribemont as evidence of both the victorious and the defeated victims of a single battle: ‘trophies’ of headless enemies displayed on a platform or incorporated into an ossuary, contrasted with the more respectful excarnation of victorious ‘dead heroes’ protected within a plank-built ‘memorial enclosure’ (pp 199–200). I wanted to find out more about Armit’s alternative hypotheses related to this extraordinary and iconic site but unfortunately he did not expand on these in this volume.

The heart of the study is a long-term account of transformations in the character, meaning and deployment of head-cults in southern France, spanning the Late Bronze Age through to the early Roman era. From its origins in Late Bronze Age cosmology, relating to fertility and the reproductive potential of the community as a whole, headhunting, Armit argues, went on to develop a key role in ritual iconography as part of a social process of tribal ‘encompassment’: separating insiders from those outside – made ‘other’ partly through these violent seizures of heads. As the Saluvian confederacy developed, Armit proposes that the hero-warrior figure (sculpturally represented in part through their headhunting prowess) is used to embody new ideologies and negotiate novel power structures. Finally, Armit interprets the iconoclastic destruction of much of this visually arresting sculpture as the result of the disruption of indigenous autonomy in the wake of Roman military campaigns. Headhunting re-emerges as part of a more brutal ideology of debasement and the humiliation of enemies in Roman-occupied France. This is impressive scholarship, drawing together antiquarian and twentieth-century excavation material with recent developer-funded work.

The book also ranges around Britain, in particular the other main area of the author’s research expertise: Atlantic Scotland and the near Continent, in order to evaluate wider evidence for Iron Age fascinations with the head. While this helps establish the international context of the phenomenon, the case studies are necessarily selective and more lightly drawn. Unfortunately, sometimes this differential weight and emphasis pulls against Armit’s call for a contextually specific understanding of the phenomena. I also felt that his discussion of the head as a peculiarly rich, cross-cultural site of metaphor, meaning and symbolic importance, is rather less well developed than it might be (for example, Robb and Harris Reference Robb and Harris2013) and pertinent literature on Iron Age heads, hair and headgear is ignored when this would enhance the study (for example, Aldhouse-Green Reference Aldhouse-Green2004). Meanwhile, one of the gems of the study is ethnographic and archaeological evidence, which tells us of the post mortem agency of heads, through demands to be ritually ‘fed’, oiled, housed or polished! Armit’s observation that crania are often poised on the symbolic threshold of different worlds, whether this is a portico or ‘doorway’ lintel, cave mouth or boundary, offers an original insight into their mediatory power. However, I felt there was room for a more graphic discussion of the visceral, bloody reality of headhunting, realised through detailed weapons trauma evidence and osteological detail (though, in contrast, see Armit et al Reference Armit, Schulting, Knüsel and Shepherd2011), and that this archaeological analysis could be profitably set within recent sociological studies on violence, performance and affect (for example, Hughes Reference Hughes2011 and Thompson Reference Thompson2011).

These, however, are minor points in what is a pivotal critique of ‘Celtic’ headhunting. Throughout, Armit’s writing is metaphorically rich, his argument well balanced and his evidence densely detailed. It is a gripping, if at times, terrifying, insight into Iron Age mentalities – but one that does justice to the different cosmological and political ideals that inspired cults of the head.