“KILL YOUR ENEMY. CUT OFF HIS (OR KIN RARE CASES, HER) HEAD. FLEE.” Such is the first step in an oft-circulated recipe for shrinking a human head – followed by a twenty-hour regimen of skinning, sculpting, boiling, stitching, kneading, smoking and polishing. The formula, which has popped up on the internet, in brochures, and even on the backs of T-shirts, certainly wasn’t the invention of late collector William Jamieson, but it’s a process that he delighted in describing to neophytes. He learned it in the stifling heat of the Amazon jungle, where numerous expeditions led him to the huts of warriors who preserved the gruesome tradition of severing, shrinking and preserving the heads of their enemies.
Between his first expedition into the Peruvian rainforest in 1995 and his death from…
