Three Skulls from Sabah in the Pitt Rivers Museum

Abstract:The collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University includes three human skulls from British North Borneo, now Sabah, taken and preserved as part of a headhunting tradition. Labelled as heads of Tangalung natives, they were accessioned by the Museum in 1889. Establishing the provenance of the skulls is fairly simple but determining their context is not. North Borneo became a British protectorate in 1888, with administrative authority in the hands of the North Borneo Chartered Company, but the company struggled to control remote parts of the territory where there was little British presence. It employed Dayaks from Sarawak as policemen to deal with the ethnically diverse population and put a stop to blood feuds and headhunting, but Dayaks had their own headhunting tradition and the heads in the museum were taken and processed as trophies by policemen. Presented to a colonial official, they became trophies of a different sort, ultimately displayed in a British museum.