Binding, Wrapping, Constricting, and Constraining the Head: A Consideration of Cranial Vault Modification and the Pain of Infants

Abstract

The intentional and permanent modification of head shape was common throughout antiquity. This intimate practice involved binding the head of infants with long cloths and occasionally with pillows or boards for what seems to have been a period of even years. Through this constant pressure and constriction, individuals were able to obtain a variety of alterations to natural head shape. In this chapter, I consider ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources that speak to the practice of intentionally binding the heads of children in the pre-Columbian and colonial Americas. I integrate this information with a large-scale study of the skeletal evidence for this custom in northern Chile and concomitant evidence for related injury or chronic conditions. Landa, among other chroniclers of the Spanish conquest, speaks to strong pain and even death affecting infants in the Aztec world as a result of modifying the head; others only address the myriad forms and the strangeness of this custom. My analyses of the crania of well over 1,000 individuals show no clear ties to chronic conditions such as arthritis or TMJ nor evidence that the pressure of this practice caused skull fractures. While the physical ramifications of this choice are prominent and permanent, overall, textual, and material evidence suggests that what pain there was, was tolerable and normalized, by the infants and children, but more notably by the adults imposing this practice. Ultimately, the overall goal of modifying head shape superseded the discomfort of the act.