What decapitation tells us about human nature

In "Severed," anthropologist Frances Larson explores Western culture's long-standing fascination with decapitated human heads.

"A severed head, whether it is preserved whole or reduced to its skull, looks at us from another world where we are all destined to go," she writes.

Larson joined The Daily Circuit to talk about her book.

The history of severed heads with a message

1. People used heads of their enemies to exercise power and communicate during conflict.

William Wallace, one of the leaders in the Wars of Scottish Independence, was caught by English forces in 1305. He "was mutilated, disemboweled and, being accused of treason, he was probably emasculated," according to the BBC. While England used his body as a warning to others in the rebellion, he became a martyr for Scotland.

More from the BBC:

For the crimes of sacrilege to English monasteries, his heart, liver, lungs and entrails were cast upon a fire, and, finally, his head was chopped off. His carcase was then cut up into bits. His head was set on a pole on London Bridge, another part went to Newcastle, a district Wallace had destroyed in 1297-8, the rest went to Berwick, Perth and Stirling (or perhaps Aberdeen), as a warning to the Scots. Edward had destroyed the man, but had enhanced the myth.

2. The history of executions is a history of entertainment.

We try to distance ourselves from that past, but it's still very much a part of modern history, Larson said. Throughout time, watching executions has been a pastime and continue to garner viewers today through Internet video posted by terrorists killing hostages.

3. Families of the dead kept heads as keepsakes.

In another famous beheading case, the head of Sir Thomas More became a memorial.

A brief recap of his story:

After his head came down from the London Bridge, his daughter kept it the rest of her life as a personal relic and shrine, Larson said.

4. When the guillotine was introduced as a more humane option, spectators were disappointed.

From The Independent: "The guillotine, created during the French Revolution to be humane, terrifyingly accelerated the production line of execution and effected the Terror. The initial spectators felt cheated. Its action was too quick for the eye to see; there were no enjoyable writhings or screams. Larson relates how this led to a deep uneasiness about the exact moment of death, and urban legends about cheeks that blushed angrily, and eyes that swiveled after decapitation."

The speed and efficiency of the guillotine even took its toll on the executioners. Charles-Henri Sanson was an executioner in the city of Paris for more than 40 years, executing almost 3,000 people.

He wrote in his diary about one mass-execution in 1794. Excerpted in Larson's book:

Terrible day. The guillotine devoured 54. My strength went, my heart failed me. That evening, sitting down to dinner, I told my wife that I could see spots of blood on my napkin... I don't lay claim to any sensibility I don't possess: I have seen too often and too close up the sufferings and death of my fellow human beings to be easily affected. If what I feel is not pity it must be caused by an attack of nerves; perhaps it is the hand of God punishing my cowardly pliancy to what so little resembles that justice which I was born to serve.

5. We can't get enough shrunken heads.

From The Washington Post:

Larson, who has an honorary research fellowship in anthropology at Durham University in England, writes about shrunken heads "made, around one hundred years ago, by the Shuar, who live in the tropical rainforest of the Andes and the Amazonian lowlands in Ecuador and Peru"; "trophy heads" taken by, among many others, American soldiers in the Pacific theater of World War II; Christians who "offer prayers to the heads of saints, which are found in churches across Europe and are often kept in richly jewelled reliquaries"; the "craze for human skulls" in 19th-century Europe and America, spurred by the fad for phrenology, a pseudo-science claiming "that a person's character could be read by studying their [sic] head," and so forth.

6. Beheadings today get worldwide audiences online.

Now people can witness a beheading from the comfort of their homes on the Internet.

An excerpt from "Severed:"

Iraq hostage beheadings were 'made for TV.' Other terrorist activities, like suicide attacks or bombings, are hard to capture on camera because they are necessarily clandestine, unpredictable and frenetic events, but the decapitation of a hostage can be carefully stage-managed, choreographed and rehearsed while still remaining brutally authentic. The footage is clear and close up. The murderers are offering their viewers a front-row seat at their show; and what they want to show is their strength, their organization, their commitment to the cause, their complete control and domination of their victim.

7. Humans have a strong fascination with the body and removed ways of exploring it.

One caller told her story of working as a security guard at the Body Worlds traveling exhibit: