Headhunting

The Ifugaos seem to be the only people in the world who have developed peacemaking ideology in a typically aggressive genre of oral literature. The rich literature on epic traditions worldwide portrays a highly male-centered genre of song glorifying heroic values and warlike acts. Ifugao male epics represents aggressive ideology, which it shares with all the corresponding genres from India to Iceland. But what is specific of the Ifugao epic lore is that it contains two trends. The /hudhud/, female epic tradition of the Ifugaos, is a unique specimen of peacemaking, even pacifist ideology in epic form. This ideology has developed in the peak of headhunting period, i.e. it is genuine, not imposed by the influence of other cultures as, for instance, the motives of regret that appeared in Kalinga Ullalim under the influence of Christianization and American "order".

In this essay, I will demonstrate ornaments that were used by Igorot people of indigenous mountain tribes from Northern Luzon, Philippines through selected ornaments that reflect past traditions of headhunting expeditions and personal beautification. I will be relating to parallel practices of the Naga tribe of Nagaland, Northeast India by reasons of strong resemblance and similarity of decorative adornments and rituals of headhunting and tattooing. I will expound on the use of ornaments as an enunciation of livelihood with symbolic, ritualistic and utilitarian purposes that are unique to the Cordillera region.

*This essay was done in fulfillment of the Southeast Asian Module of the Post Graduate Diploma in Asian Art at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Linguistic reconstructions of the PAN root ​ *kayaw​ by researchers such as Liao, Blust, and Dempwolff demonstrate an Austronesian raiding complex that incorporates lowland and highland peoples in what is both a display of masculinity and engine of economic transformation. Exploiting this system in its culturally particularist variations gives a man (often a datu or chief) access to a wide range of resources to increase his personal prowess, including heirloom goods, human heads, and captives. While this institution historically presented a clear threat to women, who were frequently targeted for capture as wives and slaves, female voices were not silent in pushing back against male violence through stories of powerful shamans, transvestites, and goddesses. This paper seeks to first explore foundational literature on ​ *kayaw​ as a Southeast Asian economic and political behavior and also to contextualize these case studies through the Visayan sugidanon​ epic chant tradition. As these poems were historically chanted by women, they provide a uniquely feminine lens through which raiding can be analyzed. This second part of the analysis also investigates how non-binary individuals like effeminate men (​ bakla​ or ​ asog​) could attain prowess through female and male means. The goal of doing so is to assert female/feminine agency in the creation of intangible cultural heritage as both oral history and culture vehicle in an early modern Philippine society.

RESUMEN: El uso de la contratación como una práctica de recursos humanos es generalmente un problema con presencia dentro de la comunidad de investigación de gestión. Este artículo, analiza a través de una revisión bibliográfica, la relación entre los clientes y las empresas denominadas cazatalentos tomando como referencia la información asimétrica que está presente en el proceso de selección y que puede poner en peligro el resultado de la relación, es decir la selección del candidato apropiado. Nuestra intención es establecer las causas y consecuencias relacionadas con la escasez de información, la variabilidad en la selección del candidato por el Cazatalentos, el acceso a esta información, y la intervención de la otra parte con el resultado. También se incluyen un conjunto de propuestas relacionadas con la investigación, y algunas conclusiones vinculadas con la definición de un candidato óptimo.
ABSTRACT: The use of outsourcing as an HR practice is generally a current problem within the community of management research. This article analyzes through a literature review; the relationship between customers and companies called headhunters, considering asymmetric information that is present during the selection process, and how this may jeopardize the outcome of the relationship, the appropriate candidate selection. Our intention is to establish the potential causes and related consequences, linked to these information asymmetries, the variability in the candidate's selection for the Headhunters, access to this information, and the intervention of the other party within the result. A set of proposals related to the research, and some conclusions related to the definition of an optimal candidate is included.

The study of hunter-gatherer societies has had a large impact on the discussion of the problems of aggression and violence. Ethnologists and psychologists are more inclined to regard aggression as an innate characteristic of human nature, whereas many anthropologists – those studying foraging and post-foraging societies in particular – consider that to be a biased approach. Instead, this paper argues that love and hatred, aggression and peaceful ideology are two sides of the same coin. It was an aggressive headhunting Ifugao society that formed a unique peacemaking ideology, and, notably enough, this ideology was expressed in the form of a typically “aggressive” genre of heroic epic. The paper is based on epic texts analysis and fieldwork materials of the author.

Este artículo constituye un paso más en nuestro estudio del mito y del rito en su relación con su raíz. Aquí discutimos los aspectos egogónicos y egocráticos que encierra el ritual de caza de cabezas de los asmat de Nueva Guinea además de su relación con la muerte de la psique y su vivificación indirecta, conceptos centrales de nuestra teoría del mito.

In this paper, warfare in insular Southeast Asia is examined through the comparison of three groups of highland shifting cultivators.  The thesis is that the current social evaluation of violence and aggression within each group is the result of differing historical experiences within a loosely integrated regional political economy dominated by the institutions of slave raiding and coerced trade.  Those groups positively disposed toward bellicosity are those which played a predominantly predatory role in the region, while those which are negatively disposed toward violence in any form were primarily prey. There is, however, nothing deterministic about the argument, for each concrete example represents only one of a number of logically possible responses to a given sequence of historical events. All three groups still retain a significant degree of autonomy over their internal political and ideological systems, and each must be seen as creatively responding to a changing set of external political and economic forces.

In the first part of the paper, a brief outline is provided of the general historical context in which these three societies have developed. In the second part, an overview of each society is given. In the third part, their respective attitudes toward violence, social ranking and indebtedness are compared and contrasted. The paper concludes with a look at some of the implications of asking questions about human violence in the contexts of exploitation and of ritual attitudes, as opposed to those of aggression and competition for scarce natural resources.

El head-hunter investiga en el mercado a los candidatos potenciales y  adecuados y establece la estrategia de acercamiento. Organiza las  entrevistas y según los resultados, selecciona a los finalistas.
Revisa las referencias, negocia y cierra con el candidato la oferta y está con
el cliente durante su proceso de ingreso y renuncia.

Un head-hunter es brillante, ambicioso, energético y entusiasta. Son  personas interesantes y agudas con un nivel de percepción desarrollado  para detectar, escuchar y observar el talento de un candidato en un  periodo de tiempo mucho menor al que le llevaría una persona no  entrenada.

Cuando un profesionista busca oportunidades en su carrera profesional y  esta listo para crecer, una forma elegante y discreta de accesar al mercado  sin deteriorar su imagen con su contratante actual es a través de un head-  hunter.

Il s’agira de s’interroger sur la pratique de la décollation dans l’armée du Principat en insistant sur l’influence des auxiliaires celtes au début de l’époque impériale. S’il est vrai que les Romains étaient les héritiers d’une ancienne tradition de chasse aux têtes, Strabon affirme que ce type de violence fut interdit après la conquête des Gaules, en relation avec l’horreur que suscitaient les pratiques sacrificielles des Celtes. Pourtant, des têtes coupées apparaissent en nombre sur les reliefs triomphaux de l’époque antonine et sur les stèles funéraires de cavaliers d’ailes. Comment expliquer la résurgence de cette coutume tombée en désuétude dans le monde romain dès IIe siècle av. n. è. ? On postulera que la revalorisation de la chasse aux têtes est liée à l’incorporation des auxiliaires d’Europe occidentale dans l’armée régulière du Principat. Sans pour autant verser dans la caricature du barbare sanguinaire, de nombreux indices prouvent que les chasseurs de têtes impériaux étaient majoritairement issus de ces unités et pratiquaient leur art suivant des modalités qui étaient étrangères aux traditions militaires italiques. On évoquera en particulier la découverte de plusieurs dépôts de crânes votifs en Gaule et en Bretagne datés d’après la conquête romaine. Ces trophées qui étaient offerts à des divinités montrent que les coutumes celtes de l’âge du fer n’avaient pas été complètement abandonnées à l’époque. A tel point que les autorités impériales durent finalement se résoudre à accepter cet état de fait en régulant la pratique de la décollation dans les provinces frontalières et en lui attribuant un sens positif, lié à la mise en scène de la lutte de la civilisation contre la barbarie. Ces conclusions nous amènerons à réexaminer la question de l’origine et de la fonction des casques à visages qui étaient utilisés par les cavaliers romains. Longtemps perçus comme des équipements d’origine thrace, il semble en réalité que ces artefacts soient à relier au monde celtique. Ils révéleraient toute l’importance que les peuples d’Europe occidentale accordaient à la tête, considérée par eux comme le siège de l’âme humaine.

This essay examines how anthropogeographical conceptions become materialized in place names inscribed on human remains. With respect to a type of headhunting artefact designated in museum anthropology as ‘stuffed human heads’, I consider processes of inscription and theorizing accompanying the circulation of stuffed heads between New Guinea and Cambridge. I trace the micro-history of one inscription – ‘Strickland R’ – across interrelated labels, articles, texts, notes, and the head itself, in order to reveal intellectual constructs simultaneously abbreviated and materialized in the human remains. In Papua, stuffed heads were understood as evidence of the geography of headhunting and cannibal customs. In Cambridge, they were framed within anthropologist A. C. Haddon's studies on the anthropogeography of New Guinea. By abbreviating colonial and scientific constructs, the words ‘Strickland R.’ enabled the material ‘stuffed head’ into which they fused to become inextricably linked to the theory and display of ‘culture areas’ in the museum.

This paper explores the origins of the horse games (hippika gymnasia) of the Roman imperial army. It argues that the equestrian displays lengthily described by Arrian in his tactical treatise were borrowed from the Gallic and Iberian Celts, who formed the most important part of the Roman auxiliary cavalry at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Principate. Mask helmets were worn by the most renowned horsemen during these games. The first examples of such masks in Roman context can be found on triumphal representations celebrating victories over Celtiberian or Gallic foes. The evidence suggests that they were initially made of organic materials, like the over-modelled or plastered skull masks that could adorn public monuments in pre-Roman Gaul. From the end of the 1st century BC onward, they began to adopt the form of full metal helmets and were progressively adapted to the Greco-Roman taste. The idea that the hippika gymnasia were borrowed from the Roman equestrian parade called the lusus Troiae and that mask helmets were part of an old Italic tradition should, therefore, be abandoned.

After independence, a search for national heroes in the Indonesian struggle against
colonialism drew attention to Wona Kaka, a Sumbanese headhunter who raided
Dutch forces in 1911. Praised by some as the first figure in a common national
history, he is also used as a champion of local tradition who resists integration into
the "imagined community" of the Indonesian state. Controversy over efforts to
"call back his soul" from Java shows the ideological bases of the construction of
history and clashes between nationalism and opposition to outside control. [history,
headhunting, colonialism, nationalist ideology, mythology, Indonesia]

This dissertation posits, theoretically and empirically, that Agency Theory personal and organizational assumptions explain more fully and realistically than any other management theory the relationship in a business triad: Client-Headhunter-Candidate. Moreover, the dissertation develops research on the Executive Search Processes using third parties. This study identifies some situations in this triad relationship that may compromise the whole executive search process. The triad relationship is analyzed in dyads using the headhunter as a hinge between the two other parties. The central hypothesis is that Agency Theory presents more solid arguments and assumptions aligned with real-world situations than other management theories. This argument allows researchers to understand failures in the executive search process, creating the possibility of streamlining processes.
The central hypothesis is reviewed and tested in few stages: first, by theoretical and context reviews on the triad relationship, and then in the dyad, headhunter-client. Furthermore, it tests in part the hypothesis in the dyad headhunter-candidate with data analyses derived from a survey among 202 candidates who have been contacted by headhunters.
This dissertation provides contributions to management theory development with regard to the usage for Agency Theory on triads’ scenarios. This research presents the best explanation for a particular business triad like the client-headhunter-candidate triad. This thesis also provides contributions in the field of Human Resources Management. Another important contribution this study provides relates to the practitioners in the executive search profession and the individuals who use them as an outlet to develop their careers

The recent crisis of representation in ethnographic writing has
problematised many of the ethical assumptions which surround the life history method: On what basis can western scholars accurately “give voice” to people from another culture? Life histories are no longer seen as simple documents which can be “collected”, recorded and translated, but as complex, dialogically created narratives, in which the ethnographer’s own questions, interests and expectations construct a series of topics which the subject is called upon to address. Recent
critical life histories (Behar 1993; Frank 2000) have developed the notion of the “biography in the shadow”, a term coined by Frank to designate the subtle, often unconfessed attractions that draw each ethnographer to his or her prime informants.
This paper examines a new level of these problems. It looks at
different claims to “own” a life history — in this case, claims put
forward about the life of a prominent man who played an important role in the period of contact and colonial conquest on the Eastern Indonesian island of Sumba. Although his father was beheaded when he was a young boy and he himself was sold as a slave, Yoseph Malo rose to take heads himself, and become both a traditional clan leader and the first Dutch-appointed Raja of Rara. He was the first convert to the Catholic Church on the island, and in 1960, after he retired and Indonesia achieved its independence, one of his last acts was to request a Catholic wedding to the last of his eight wives.

Работа, посвященная культуре народов Филиппин, как и другие статьи сборника «Этнография детства», который впервые ввел в отечественную науку данную тему, написана на основе вопросника, составленного этносоциологом И.С. Коном. На материале ифугао, горного народа Лусона, подробно рассмотрены и проанализированы как традиционные механизмы социализации, так и роль культурной трансмиссии в обществе, переживающем аккультурацию, отказывающемся от части традиционных ценностей в связи с христианизацией и отказом от охоты за головами. В статье предложены две модели социализации, которые автор противопоставляет как характерные для горных (шаманистских, политеистических) и равнинных (католических) культур архипелага.

Cross-cultural exploration of the practice of headhunting in various tribal societies in insular Southeast Asia and in South Melanesia, as described by ethnographers since the nineteenth century. Various motives for this practice, as well as beliefs and rituals attached to it and the gender roles involved, are discussed. With data from fieldwork among the inhabitants of Minahasa in northern Sulawesi.

Borneo had had a reputation for the 'exotic' as far back as the 1600s. Many of its 'meanings' had already been fixed as European stereotypes well before any first-hand British accounts were available. Because Borneo offered the travel writer such a plethora of exotic subject matter, my concentration here must be on the treatment of one particular trope only, that of head-hunting. In ways which are both similar to, yet significantly different from, the trope of cannibalism, head-hunting could (and can) become a limit marker between self and Other, the civilized and the savage, Britain and Borneo. In these works, it is often the locus of interesting tensions and negotiations between (in Célestin's terms) home, the world of the Other, and the authorial subject.

In a world of Google, Nike, Apple, Uber, and Starbucks, business practitioners might start to believe that the most successful company names are innovative, trendy, and even unusual. This approach of using stylish and uncommon names was identified by Muzellec (2006), who argued that companies were changing their approach to naming themselves. Nevertheless, while Muzellec's (2006) findings are somewhat generalizable, the finding does not apply to all business sectors. This study presents a replication of Muzellec's (2006) study in a business sector in which Muzellec's (2006) company name trends do not apply: executive search firms (ESFs), also known as "headhunters." The replication was conducted using a list of 93 members of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC). Additionally, to validate and extend Muzellec's (2006) findings, we did a descriptive analysis on a second and larger dataset containing company names for 1199 self-reported ESFs listed in the U.S. Economic Census. Our study indicates that ESFs do not follow Muzellec's (2006) findings; instead, we find that patronymic names are the dominant type of name in this industry.

University of the Philippines Archaeological Studies Program Conference 2021 last August 24, 2021.  Starts at 40:00.
Arsenio Nicolas : Music, Ritual and Headhunting in Northern Luzon – Historical Resistance, Conformity and Transformation
All the other sessions are linked to this video on YouTube.
This presentation is adapted from my MA thesis entitled “Ritual Transformations and Musical Parameters. A Study of Selected Headhunting Rites on Southern Cordillera Northern Luzon.” (Arsenio Nicolas, University of the Philippines, 1989). It will feature pictures and videos which were not available then. Headhunting (also called headtaking, headcutting) in Northern Luzon, Philippines was a ritual act, and cosmological in nature. A head was required before rice planting began and after a successful harvest. It was also used to acquire a certain life force emanating from the victim's head, offered to a esteemed person before his death chair. The headhunting ritual complex was maintained by a complex system --- a dry rice and a wet rice agricultural system, trade relations with friendly villages and with the lowlands, kin and village alliances which defined the social units. Facets of an old megalithic culture, manifested in stone paved platforms in mens' houses where cut heads were buried and where ritual feasts and music-making were held, rice terracing, and buffalo sacrifice are evident, within a cosmology and a terrestial relationship with the dead, with the ancestors or the spirit of nature. In all these, a system of symbols is expressed in rituals, prayers, chanting, offerings, music making, singing, dancing, village revelry or a declaration of a village isolation to propitiate the death of a kin victim of the headhunt. After the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and Catholic friars in the late sixteenth century and later American Protestant missionaries in early twentieth century, the gradual conversion to Christianity changed the ritual and musical landscape of highland northern Luzon, after and following the systematic prohibition and slow erosion of indigenous musical traditions in the lowlands. This paper outlines the various trajectories of resistance, conformity without acceptance, an eventual forgetting of the past, and the ritual transformation of the headhunting ritual complex in highland northern Luzon, utilizing a variety of sources -- colonial documents, contemporary ethnography and musical field data, and videos and pictures from the internet and social media.

The Amerindian practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies has long intrigued both the research community as well as the public. This edited volume focuses on trophy taking behavior in both North and South America. The editors and contributors, which include Native Peoples from both continents, examine the evidence and causes of trophy taking as reflected in osteological, archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic accounts. They present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence.

In vielen Bereichen wird in Deutschland über den Mangel an Fachkräften diskutiert. Dieser Fachkräftemangel betrifft zahlreiche Branchen, wie beispielsweise das Baugewerbe, die Gastronomie und der Maschinenbau. Allerdings sind besonders die Pflege und das Gesundheitswesen von diesem Mangel stark betroffen. Das Problem daran ist, dass fehlendes Personal in gerade diesen Berufen Menschenleben kosten kann, was natürlich unbedingt vermieden werden sollte. Auf welche Weise soll dem entgegengewirkt werden und welche Lösungsansätze gibt es? Damit möchten wir uns im Folgenden näher befassen; die Vermittlung von Pflegekräften nach Deutschland. Was bedeutet der Fachkräftemangel in der Pflege? Verschiedenen Studien, wie beispielsweise durch das Statistische Zentralamt, besagen, dass sich bis zum Jahr 2050 die Zahl der pflegebedürftigen Menschen voraussichtlich verdoppeln wird. Bis zu diesem Jahr wird sich die Zahl der über 80-jährigen in Deutschland auf über 10 Millionen belaufen. Die Tatsache, dass die Menschen immer älter werden, bringt auch Probleme mit sich. Gesundheitliche Probleme, wie zum Beispiel Altersdemenz oder andere Gründe, warum eine Pflege notwendig ist, werden zunehmen. Damit einhergehend wird sich der Bedarf an pflegenden Menschen ebenfalls stark erhöhen. Experten sprechen davon, dass in 15 Jahren etwa 112.000, bis 2025 sogar 152.000 Stellen in der Pflege unbesetzt sein werden, was das Gesundheits-und Pflegesystem in Deutschland vor enorme Probleme stellt. Aber nicht nur in der Zukunft wird das Land vor Probleme aufgrund des Fachkräftemangels gestellt werden. Bereits jetzt ist der Mangel deutlich zu spüren. Dies kann fatale Folgen haben.

ABSTRACT  The Wa people have long occupied a special place in the state-directed political spectacle of minority nationalities, in both China and Burma. This fascination builds on older views of the Wa as dangerous barbarians, and closely evokes other primitivisms
from around the world. In China and in neighbouring countries, state policy has recently combined with commercial entrepreneurism to cultivate a new, selective nostalgia for ‘primitive-exotic’ peoples like the Wa. In this paper, I discuss mainly
China, and how the ‘wild’ Wa headhunting paraphernalia prohibited by the Chinese in the 1950s now reappear as kitsch. Some Wa of older generations see such revivals as dangerous, but younger people may embrace the revival. I discuss the new Chinese repackaging of primitive violence and the different Wa understandings of these staged exoticizations of their culture, including ways the staged representations are taken up in Wa attempts to revive aspects of their cultural past.
KEYWORDS Primitivism, grotesque, kitsch, cultural theme parks, Wa, China, Asia

ABSTRACT In 1988, the disarticulated human remains of forty Roman individuals were discovered at 52-63 London Wall, London. Examination of the sample using techniques employed by forensic anthropology and entomology found that some of the material had been deposited in open waterlogged pits. The majority of the sample was adult males who had evidence for multiple peri-mortem blunt- and sharp- force injuries; many also had healed injuries, suggesting that violence was a common feature of their life. Despite the fact that this material was recovered from an industrial area in the upper Walbrook valley of London, the evidence for trauma, their context and associated archaeological and environmental evidence reveals that these deposits are markedly different from other published examples of human remains from the Walbrook stream and River Thames, and may represent the remains of headhunting by the Roman army and/or defeated gladiators.

In the last few years, occult head-hunters – elusive figures that have haunted communities and the public imagination in Indonesia since at least colonial times – appear to have adopted a novel and troubling tactic. Instead of decapitating their victims and using the heads in construction rituals as they are said to have conventionally done, head-hunters are now allegedly harvesting their victims’ organs to sell them on the global market of body parts. Based on a comparison of ethnographic material from North Maluku, a province in the eastern part of Indonesia, and news reports in regional and national papers, I trace how accounts about headhunting have morphed with narratives about organ theft. I argue that this plasticity is not a merely a change in symbolic ideas of the occult that reflects changing political and economic realities. Rather, I propose that their turn to organ theft enrols head-hunters in a contemporary and global ‘travelling package’ that includes and entangles organ trafficking practices, media accounts, political imaginaries, and social anxieties within the same field of reality and possibility, a field of verisimilitude in which fiction and fact, rumour and reality, are fundamentally blurred. The article proposes a ‘more-than-representational’ approach to the organ-stealing head-hunter that sees him not just as a representation of particular political and historical circumstances but as a co-producer of these circumstances, of particular political worlds and their attendant scales of anxiety. This approach, I argue, challenges the epistemological distinction between symbolic representation and political reality that informed (but also incommoded) the analyses of headhunting rumours in the 1980s and 1990s – and that continues to inform anthropological analyses of ‘the occult’ more generally.

The taking of bloody heads in vengeance raids on neighboring peoples defined the
parameters of leadership and political relations on the Eastern Indonesian island
of Sumba a century ago. After pacification in the 1920s, exchange values of fierceness,
military skill, and violent conquest were transformed into modern ones of
rivalrous diplomacy, feasting, and alliance. Yoseph Malo, a prominent figure in
these transformations, decided to negotiate with his former enemies for the return
of his father's head. Details of this negotiation bring into question the relations
between systems of headhunting and alliance, the status of exchange as a transformative
activity, and the analytical definition of persons and objects, gifts and
commodities. The biography of an important figure in Sumbanese history is linked
to the "biography" of a severed head, as well as the "life histories" of persons and
objects on which he bestowed ritual names. Through a reevaluation of the role of
exchange in determining value, a new perspective is suggested on how persons
and things change their identities as they move through time. [history, exchange
theory, headhunting, alliance, Eastern Indonesia]

A webinar presentation at the "Indigenous Responses to Colonial Incursions Conference," sponsored by the University of the Philippines Archaeology Studies Program, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021, 1:30 pm to 2:50pm (Manila time)
Music, Ritual and Headhunting in Northern Luzon – Historical Resistance, Conformity and Transformation
by Arsenio Nicolas.
Facebook Live -- https://www.facebook.com/UPASP
Zoom Registration : bit.ly/IndigenousResponses

This presentation is adapted from my MA thesis entitled “Ritual Transformations and Musical Parameters. A Study of Selected Headhunting Rites on Southern Cordillera Northern Luzon.” (Arsenio Nicolas, University of the Philippines, 1989). It features pictures and videos which were not available then.

Headhunting (also called headtaking, headcutting) in Northern Luzon, Philippines was a ritual act, and cosmological in nature. A head was required before rice planting began and after a successful harvest. It was also used to acquire a certain life force emanating from the victim's head, offered to a esteemed person before his death chair. The headhunting ritual complex was maintained by a complex system --- a dry rice and a wet rice agricultural system, trade relations with friendly villages and with the lowlands, kin and village alliances which defined the social units. Facets of an old megalithic culture, manifested in stone paved platforms in mens' houses where cut heads were buried and where ritual feasts and music-making were held, rice terracing, and buffalo sacrifice are evident, within a cosmology and a terrestial relationship with the dead, with the ancestors or the spirit of nature. In all these, a system of symbols is expressed in rituals, prayers, chanting, offerings, music making, singing, dancing, village revelry or a declaration of a village isolation to propitiate the death of a kin victim of the headhunt. After the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and Catholic friars in the late sixteenth century and later American Protestant missionaries in early twentieth century, the gradual conversion to Christianity changed the ritual and musical landscape of highland northern Luzon, after and following the systematic prohibition and slow erosion of indigenous musical traditions in the lowlands. This paper outlines the various trajectories of resistance, conformity without acceptance, an eventual forgetting of the past, and the ritual transformation of the headhunting ritual complex in highland northern Luzon, utilizing a variety of sources -- colonial documents, contemporary ethnography and musical field data, and videos and pictures from the internet and social media.