1 TACAPE USE AND PROVENIENCE OF HUMAN TROPHY HEAD OF MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY OF TURIN, ITALY Alfredo José Altamirano (1), Raffaella Bianucci (2), Ezio Ferroglio (3) & Otto Appenzeller (4) 1 Laboratory of Physical Anthropology and Forensic of National University of Federico Villarreal, UNMSM, Perú 2 Laboratory of Criminalistic Sciences, Department of Anatomy, Pharmacology and Legal Medicine, University of Turin; University of Marseille, France (raffaella.bianucci@unito.it, raffaella.bianucci@gmail.com), 3 Laboratory of Parasitology and Parasitic Diseases, Department of Animal Production, Epidemiology and Ecology, University of Turin 4 New Mexico Health Enhancement and Marathon Clinics Research Foundation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA In South America there are different Indians groups that realized mummifications of human head and body to obtain power and physical strong and spiritual in front of theirs enemies (Cockburn et al. 1998; Aufderheide 2003). Disappeared cultures like Paracas, Nasca, Mochica and others of Peru realized this ritual (Dérobert et al. 1975; Verano et al. 1999a, b). In actual people from Amazon region as Jivaro at Ecuador and Munduruku in Brazil, had followed practicing the mummification of head or “trophy head” until end of XIX century and testimony of preparation and use of those trophies can be found in ethnographic and ethnohistoric literature (Fausto 2000). Shrunken head trade was intense during the XIX century, and they reached European countries at high prices. However, those references about mythology Munduruku that concern to human heads, most part of them collected by particulars between middle of XIX century and beginning of XX, exist little studies of human heads (Rodrigues 1882; Ihering 1907; Murphy & Murphy 1954; Santos et al. 2007) (Fig. 1). Fig. 1.- Centers of head trophies from Amazon and Andean region. In 2004 Raffaella Bianucci discovered in storages of Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Turin (MAET) a mummified head of origin ignored at least one century (Lallo et al. 2005; Bianucci et al. 2008). His nickname is Pedro and was kept in a dustbin lid. This short article shows two articulated hypotheses about the instrument that caused his death and to identify his probably origin. Until today nobody had found a skull or trophy head with severe lesion in facial region. Though, the importance of this study is to demonstrate the use of borduna or tacape