2 From the earliest years of conflict between Native Americans and Europeans, the object which most resonates to the present as emblematic of that conflict’s violence is the scalp. Scalping was an ancient practice in North America that predates European contact by centuries. It figures prominently in early European accounts. Beyond its simple description as a grisly souvenir or trophy of war, the scalp, and the practice of scalping, carried meanings, both symbolic and concrete. Taking a scalp represented the ultimate dominance of a warrior over an enemy. The scalp became a stand-in for the slain enemy in a celebratory ritual of further humiliation, many with gendered aspects. Europeans also included scalping in their imperialistic war-making practices. Their scalping, which began as an imitation or response to Indian scalping, in time created a new materialistic motivation for taking scalps. Evidence for the antiquity of scalping on the North American continent takes three different forms: archaeological, historical, and linguistic. Each is compelling and the three, taken as a whole are comprehensive and convincing. The skeletal remains that form the basis for the archaeological argument for scalping as an ancient American practice are persuasive because they are perhaps the most concrete and least susceptible to semantics or interpretation, in the way that historical or linguistic arguments may be. 1 The cut marks found upon skulls that are consistent with scalping by a stone blade are among the key diagnostic attributes used by archaeologists to say with a degree of certainty that a set of skeletal remains represents a victim of interpersonal violence and “malevolent intent.” Other such attributes include bodies with multiple projectile point impacts, multiple crushing injuries, or a mass of bodies dumped 1 Phillip L. Walker, "A Bioarcheological Perspective on the History of Violence," Annual Review of Anthropology 30, no. 1 (2001): doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.573., 574.