CANNIBALISM

CANNIBALISM is both a concept and a practice that may involve diverse themes of death, food, sacrifice, revenge, aggression, love, and destruction or transformation of human others. The many and varied examples of cannibalism are difficult to summarize, except in terms of the widespread idea of the human body as a powerful symbolic site for defining relations between oneself and others and marking the boundaries of a moral community. In violating the bodily integrity that prevails in ordinary social life, cannibalism signifies an extraordinary transformation or dramatization of relations between those who eat and those who are eaten. When it occurs in religious contexts, the act of consuming human substance commonly represents an exchange between people and cosmic powers, promoting union with the divine or renewing life-sustaining spiritual relations. Such religious meanings may overlap with the social and political significance of consuming enemies to mark one's dominance and superiority—or consuming kin to express love, to distance the spirit of the deceased from the world of the living, or to acquire physical or spiritual qualities contained in the corpse. Thus sacrifice, the aggressive destruction of enemies, and the devoted incorporation or anxious destruction of a loved one's body are all facets of cannibalism that may be present in different cultural contexts.

Cannibalism and Its Complexity of Form

Anthropologists distinguish between endocannibalism, eating a member of one's own social group, and exocannibalism, eating a member of some other group, frequently an enemy. Endocannibalism is most often associated with funerals or other mortuary rites and with themes of sacrifice, familial devotion, reincarnation, and regeneration, as well as group welfare, reproduction, and continuity. Exocannibalism commonly signifies domination, revenge, or destruction of enemies. The distinction between exo- and endocannibalism has limited value in describing the complex forms in which people have ingested human body substances.

The symbolism of the sacrifice and consumption of human offerings pervades religious thought in European and Middle Eastern traditions; this symbolism is explored by Walter Burkert in Homo Necans (1983). Cannibalism is a common theme in mythology and folk tales (see Lévi-Strauss, 1969) and, as a practice, it has been reported in Europe, Polynesia, Melanesia, North and South America, and Africa (see Tannahill, 1975; Sanday, 1986; Gordon-Grube, 1988). The occurrences have no simple correlation with patterns of subsistence, ecology, food supply, or other cultural conditions.

In popular imagination and in psychoanalytic analyses such as that of Eli Sagan (1974), cannibalism has commonly been seen as characteristic of primitive communities and magical thought rather than civilization and religion. Such assumptions ignore the variety of cannibalistic practices in complex societies, such as the western European tradition of using human body parts as medicines and the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. As William Arens (1979) has emphasized, exaggerated or unfounded reports of cannibalism are widespread and often have been used as racist propaganda and justification for colonial domination of native peoples. Arguments persist about when and where cannibalism really has existed as an institutionalized, socially accepted practice. Some of the most heated of these debates have focused on Fiji and the circumstances surrounding the death of Captain James Cook in Hawai'i, and on the interpretation of archaeological remains of the ancient Anasazi culture of the southwestern United States. Anthropological scholarship on some of the better-described ethnographic and historical cases has focused on elucidating the cultural beliefs reflected in the diverse historical practices of consuming human body substances.

Cannibalism and the Aztec Religion

Perhaps the most widely known large-scale practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism is that of the ancient Aztec, as recorded by many early reports. The Aztec religion involved many kinds of offerings, but the Sun, patron of warriors, required human hearts and human blood for nourishment; human sacrifice was therefore essential. The victims were usually prisoners or purchased slaves; during the rituals, their hearts were removed and placed in vessels, and their heads were placed in skull racks. The limbs, and sometimes other portions of the victims' bodies, might be cooked and eaten by the nobles, priests, and wealthy elite, as well as by successful warriors and guests invited to celebratory feasts. Aztec priests also practiced autosacrifice, drawing their own blood as an offering.

Michael Harner (1977) and Marvin Harris (1977) argue that Aztec cannibalism had a nutritional purpose, because the Aztecs of the late prehistoric and early historic period had depleted their game supply and lacked domestic herbivores. Harner and Harris suggest that cannibalism was a response to the pressure of overpopulation and meat shortage, disguised as propitiation of the gods. Their reasoning and claims about the scale of both human sacrifice and food shortages have been disputed by other scholars who emphasize that the public ritual of blood sacrifice was vital in the Aztec religion.

Cannibalism in Symbolism and Myth

Among the Kwakiutl of the northwest coast of North America, a major feature of the winter ceremonies was the Hamatsa dancer, who symbolized hunger, craving for human flesh, the fire that transforms, and regurgitation (rebirth), and who was later tamed so as to become a member of society. Here the cannibalistic image is the key to the relation between man and supernatural forces. In the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States, northern Algonkian legends describe a cannibalistic Windigo monster. Under conditions of winter isolation and the threat of starvation, individuals sometimes developed delusions of being transformed into such a monster (Marano, 1985). The idiom of cannibalism in myth is worldwide and has an extensive range of context and meaning. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1969) points to the universe of oppositions, associations, and transformations of humans and animals: death and rebirth, cooked and raw food, death and rotting, cannibal and ogre. South America is one of the areas where these themes have been elaborated in myths and, in the past, were expressed by a number of native societies through practices of endocannibalism and exocannibalism.

Endocannibalism and Exocannibalism in South America

For some native peoples in lowland South America, endocannibalism was a ritual act that honored the deceased by sparing the corpse from the horror of burial and decay. Eradicating the body by consuming it was thought to protect against the negative effects of death and the twin dangers associated with the corpse: the danger that the body's presence would attract the dead person's soul to attack living people, and the danger of excessive grief among mourners for whom the body is a constant reminder of their loss (Conklin, 2001). South American endocannibalism took several forms, from eating the flesh (among the Guayaquí of Paraguay and the Wari' of Brazil) to cremating the flesh and grinding the roasted bones into a powder to be mixed with food or beverage and consumed (Clastres, 1974; Conklin, 2001; Dole, 1962; McCallum, 1999; Vilaça, 2000). Among the Wari' of Brazil, who believed that ancestors' spirits become game animals that offer their flesh to feed their living relatives, the act of consuming the corpse at the funeral evoked religious beliefs about life-supporting reciprocity between the living and the dead, and between people and animal spirits.

For the Tupinamba and other native peoples of lowland South America, exocannibalism was traditionally associated with intertribal and intercommunity warfare. War was highly ritualized, being preceded by dreams and magical rites, and victory was celebrated with further rites, cannibal feasts, and a display of head trophies by the victors. Prisoners might be kept for a long time, adopted or married into a local family, and then tortured before being killed and eaten. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1992) has shown how the Tupinamba treatment of war captives embodied cultural ideas about self and other, nature and culture, marriage and alliance. Carlos Fausto (1999) sees cannibalism as a key mechanism and metaphor through which Amazonian peoples transformed enemies into kin, or mortals into immortals, by taming, socializing, or perfecting that which is wild or culturally inferior.

Cannibalism in the Pacific Islands

The raiding of enemy villages and consumption of enemy dead—or the taking of captives who were later killed and eaten—also has been documented in Melanesia and Polynesia. The discovery and control of Pacific islanders from the eighteenth century onward brought exploratory expeditions, missionaries, administrators, magistrates, and, later, anthropologists into contact with local informants who described and explained their beliefs and practices related to consuming human substances. Ross Bowden (1984) reports that in New Zealand, Maori cannibalism in warfare not only provided contributions to the warriors' diet but also had a profound symbolic significance: to degrade the slain enemy, whose flesh was converted into food and whose bones were turned into objects of common use. The victors especially relished desecrating the corpse of a chief.

In Fiji, myth and historical practices together provide an understanding of the interconnections between the Fijians' surrender of their sisters to foreign husbands in exchange for marriage payment of valuable whale teeth and their capture of foreign war prisoners for cannibalism. Human sacrifice accompanied the building of sacred houses and canoes and the ceremonial visits of allied chiefs. A Fijian chief oversaw an exchange cycle that included the symbolic transfer of valued objects—women (as wives) and men (as cannibal victims); by this process, political alliances were confirmed. The cannibal victims were consecrated to the major war god, who was represented by the chief.

In parts of Melanesia, anthropologists have documented native informants' accounts of cannibalistic practices that continued into the mid-twentieth century. In the northern Fore region of the New Guinea highlands, dead enemies were eaten by men and women, and in the southern region women and children ate kin and members of the residential group who had died. Similarly, Gimi women cooked and ate the dead of the local group. The Fore people reportedly valued enemy flesh as food, but cannibalism carried ritual meanings as well. When Gimi women ate human flesh they prevented the ravages of decomposition and alleviated the hunger they believed to be caused by intense sorrow. Gimi practices were structured by kinship relations, ideas about exchange transactions between men and women, and myths that associate cannibalism with wildness and uncontrolled or rapacious female sexuality.

Elsewhere in the New Guinea highlands, warfare cannibalism reflected concerns with fertility and gender. The Bimin-Kuskusmin (see Poole, 1983) and the neighboring Miyanmin reportedly ate enemies killed in war. The latter ate the whole body, whereas the former group dismembered bodies, buried heads, and ate to defile the enemy. The Bimin-Kuskusmin distinguished between hard body parts that were considered male and were eaten by men, and those parts, flesh and fat, that were considered female and were eaten by women. The Great Pandanus Tree Rite was an occasion for feasting upon game and human victims obtained by raiding a nearby group. Fitz John Porter Poole's interpretation of this ritual emphasizes the cultural meaning of male and female substances, ritual expression of myth, relations between the sexes, fertility, and death.

Cannibalism and the Occult

Among the Asmat, the consumption of enemies was associated with the construction of masculinity through head-hunting and initiation rituals. In West Africa, among the Sherbro, for example, certain secret societies, such as the Human Leopard and Alligator, reportedly required head-hunting and cannibalism as a qualification for membership (see MacCormack, in Brown and Tuzin, 1983). Witches and sorcerers acquired and renewed their powers by consuming human flesh and thereby absorbing the powers of the deceased. Accusations of cannibalism are a political weapon still powerful among the contemporary Sherbro of Sierra Leone.

Witchcraft is in various ways commonly associated with cannibalism. In the Strickland/Bosavi region of the New Guinea highlands, among a number of groups, including the Onabasulu (see Ernst, in Goldman, 1999), witches who were executed were cooked and consumed in a symbolic denial of the individual's humanity and status as a moral person. Elsewhere, witches themselves are often thought to be cannibals who obtain personal mana (power) by consuming a victim. The notion that witches feed upon the blood and body of their victims and that death results from this loss of body substance is noted in many areas among unrelated peoples. In some places a cult group of witches is believed to teach and share techniques and cannibalistic acts, real or symbolic, but a belief in a solitary cannibal-witch also exists. Neil Whitehead (2002) describes how sorcerers in the highlands of Guyana extract and sip fluids from decomposing corpses. The act is the sorcerer's gift to divine beings of the cosmos, given to ensure the fertility of plants, fish, and animals.

Conclusion

The theme of cannibalism as an exchange that feeds and renews sources of life and fertility appears in a wide range of contexts, from the hostile relations of Guyanese sorcery and Aztec warfare and human sacrifice to the loving and honorable funerary rites of native peoples in Melanesia and lowland South America. Although Eli Sagan (1974), I. M. Lewis (1986), and other psychological theorists see in aggression and interpersonal conflict the source and meaning of cannibalism, the trend among most anthropologists and historians has been to demonstrate the diversity of cultural meanings. In both practice and imagination, cannibalism is clearly an emotionally charged and culturally significant act, but it has no single meaning. Cannibalism's multifaceted symbolism and its connections with mythic themes of sacrifice, destruction, regeneration, and social reproduction are understood best within a specific cultural context.

See Also

Aztec Religion; Human Sacrifice, overview article.

Bibliography

Books and articles on cannibalism may be theoretical or interpretive general works or they may present descriptive case studies that analyze cannibalism in particular cultural settings. Many works combine both features, applying a theoretical or interpretive approach to particular case studies.

General Works

Arens, William. The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. New York, 1979. Finds the evidence for cannibalism unconvincing.

Goldman, Laurence R., ed. The Anthropology of Cannibalism. Westport, Conn., 1999. Presents a series of articles with critiques of Arens's position, analyses of the politics of ethnographic representations of cannibalism, and case studies cited in the text of this article: Kantner on the Anasazi, Zubrinich on the Asmat, and Ernst on the Onabasulu.

Harris, Marvin. Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Culture. New York, 1977. Presents a materialist-ecological explanation of cannibalism.

Lewis, I. M. "The Cannibal's Cauldron." In Lewis's Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma, pp. 63–77. New York, 1986. Highlights symbolic themes of sexuality and oral aggression.

Sagan, Eli. Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form. New York, 1974. A popular psychoanalytic study of cannibalism in general, relating it to aggression and sublimation of aggression.

Sanday, Peggy Reeves. Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a Cultural System. New York, 1986. Surveys cross-cultural cannibalism and analyzes its relation to cultural concepts of self-other relations and the reproduction of society.

Tannahill, Reay. Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex. New York, 1975.

Studies of Areas and Cases

Bowden, Ross. "Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation." Oceania 55 (1984): 81–99.

Brown, Paula, and Donald Tuzin, eds. The Ethnography of Cannibalism. Washington, D.C., 1983. Presents a group of case studies, some cited in the text of the article: Poole on the Bimin-Kuskusmin, MacCormack on the Sherbro, and Sahlins on the Fijians, with a commentary by Shirley Lindenbaum.

Burkert, Walter. Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Berkeley, Calif., 1983. Essentially a study of the ritualization of sacrifice. Cannibalism as imagery rather than practice.

Clastres, Pierre. "Guayakí Cannibalism." In Native South Americans: Ethnology of the Least Known Continent, edited by Patricia J. Lyon, pp. 309–321. Boston, 1974.

Conklin, Beth A. Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. Austin, Tex., 2001.

Dole, Gertrude. "Endocannibalism among the Amahuaca Indians." Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 24 (1962): 567–573.

Fausto, Carlos. "Of Enemies and Pets: Warfare and Shamanism in Amazonia." American Ethnologist 26, no. 4 (1999): 933–956.

Forsyth, Donald W. "The Beginnings of Brazilian Anthropology: Jesuits and Tupinamba Cannibalism." Journal of Anthropological Research 39 (1983): 147–178.

Gillison, Gillian. Between Culture and Fantasy: A New Guinea Highlands Mythology. Chicago, 1993.

Gordon-Grube, Karen. "Anthropophagy in Post-Renaissance Europe: The Tradition of Medicinal Cannibalism." American Anthropologist 90, no. 2 (1988): 405–409.

Harner, Michael J. "The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice." American Ethnologist 4 (1977): 117–135.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. New York, 1969. Discusses myths of cannibalism and the symbolism of raw, cooked, and rotten food, especially among South American tribes.

Lindenbaum, Shirley. Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands. Palo Alto, Calif., 1979. A discussion of the importance of sorcery belief in the reactions of the Fore to the kuru disease, which was spread by contact with victims of the disease, mainly through cannibalism.

McCallum, Cecelia. "Consuming Pity: The Production of Death among the Cashinahua." Cultural Anthropology 14, no. 4 (1999): 443–471.

Marano, Lou. "Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic-Etic Confusion." In Culture-Bound Syndromes, edited by Ronald C. Simons and Charles C. Hughes, pp. 411–448. Dordrecht, 1985.

Métraux, Alfred. "The Tupinamba." In Handbook of South American Indians, edited by Julian H. Steward, vol. 3. Washington, D.C., 1949.

Métraux, Alfred. "Warfare, Cannibalism, and Human Trophies." In Handbook of South American Indians, edited by Julian H. Steward, vol. 5. Washington, D.C., 1949.

Obeyesekere, Gananath. "Cannibal Feasts in Nineteenth-Century Fiji: Seaman's Yarns and the Ethnographic Imagination." In Cannibalism and the Colonial World, edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, pp. 63–86. New York, 1998.

Poole, Fitz John Porter. "Cannibals, Tricksters, and Witches: Anthropophagic Images among Binim-Kuskusmin." In The Ethnography of Cannibalism, edited by Paula Brown and Donald Tuzin, p.13. Washington, D.C., 1983.

Sahlins, Marshall. "Raw Women, Cooked Men, and Other 'Great Things' of the Fiji Islands." In The Ethnography of Cannibalism, edited by Paula Brown and Donald Tuzin. Washington, D.C., 1983.

Strathern, Andrew. "Witchcraft, Greed, Cannibalism and Death: Some Related Themes from the New Guinea Highlands." In Death and the Regeneration of Life, edited by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, pp. 111–133. New York, 1982. Compares and discusses the themes of cannibalism, witchcraft, sacrifice, exchange, recreation, and the enemy.

Vilaça, Aparecida. "Relations between Funerary Cannibalism and Warfare Cannibalism: The Question of Predation." Ethnos 65, no. 1 (2000): 83–106.

Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo Batalha. From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago, 1992. An interpretation of Tupi-Guarani ritual cannibalism, emphasizing how society is constructed through the incorporation of enemy others.

Walens, Stanley. Feasting with Cannibals: An Essay on Kwakiutl Cosmology. Princeton, N.J., 1981. A symbolic analysis of Kwakiutl cannibalistic spirits and dances.

Whitehead, Neil L. Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death. Durham, N.C., 2002.

Zerries, Otto. "El endocanibalismo en la América del Sur." Revista do Museu Paulista (Sao Paulo) 12 (1960): 125–175.

Paula Brown (1987)

Beth A. Conklin (2005)