Depictions of severed heads, often attached to strings, on pottery and textiles of the Nazca and Paracas cultures and pots in the form of severed heads, their mouths pinned shut, are evidence of a trophy head cult.
Supernatural beings and animals like killer whales and condors are often depicted with trophy heads in their mouths, as if eating them. More recent trophy head cults, widespread in South America, suggest that people thought that the power of decapitated individuals passed to the owners of their heads, and that the heads increased fertility.
Grisly evidence of the reality of human head hunting are finds of caches of severed heads in cemeteries. Many burials at the Nazca centre of Cahuachi were of decapitated individuals or included the trophy heads of other individuals, pierced for suspension on a rope.
Trophy skulls in the ChaviÒa cemetery included those of women and children, suggesting that victims were not slain in battle but may have been chosen for sacrifice.
