Bringing together a diverse group of scholars, Social Skins of the Head: Body Beliefs and Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes effectively explores the complexities of the human head in the past, both in Mesoamerica and the South American Andes. Building on previous work in both regions, the editors and volume contributors present new data and interpretations from a wide variety of methodological approaches, including bioarchaeology, epigraphy, iconography, and linguistics.

The contributors initially addressed the importance of the head in indigenous body models during the Second Mesoamerican Symposium of Bioarchaeology, held in Mérida, Mexico, in 2012. They then expanded their discussions, as well as the disciplinary breadth of their investigations, during a two-part session titled “Cultural Meanings of Head Treatments in Mesoamerican and Andean Societies” at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The amount of time the contributors have spent grappling with these complex issues is apparent both in the theoretical sophistication of the volume as a whole and in the effective and coherent way that individual chapter authors reference and build on the other volume chapters.

Importantly, contributors include scholars at multiple career stages, from graduate students to retired faculty, as well as from multiple disciplinary backgrounds. Rather than focusing exclusively on one disciplinary approach to understanding the past, the contributors include archaeologists, art historians, bioarchaeologists, epigraphers, and linguist anthropologists. In addition, they include authors originally from Latin American countries. The coeditors should be commended for bringing together a diverse group of scholars and for providing an example of how we can decolonize our investigations of the past.

The volume is structured by region, with nine chapters on Mesoamerica in Part I and seven chapters on the Andes in Part II. Chapter 1, written by coeditors Tiesler and Lozada, effectively describes the agenda for the volume, contextualizing larger questions about conceptualizing the body and the role of the body, particularly the head, in forging identities in both regions. Each part also includes a very useful summary by scholars with wide-ranging expertise in each region; the chapters by Vail (Chapter 10) and Hastorf (Chapter 17) provide overviews of the volume, as well as important discussions of overarching themes and directions for future research. For example, Hastorf (Chapter 17) discusses recurring themes of metamorphosis and regeneration in the Andes, whereas Vail (Chapter 10) emphasizes emic Mesoamerican concepts of the soul, animating essences, and personhood. Both parts bring together multiple lines of evidence from a variety of fields, including art history, archaeology, bioarchaeology, epigraphy, ethnography, iconography, and linguistics. Many chapters include multiple lines of evidence in each case study.

In each region, individual chapters contain case studies drawn from a wide geographic and temporal range. For Mesoamerica, there are case studies on Teotihuacan (Chapter 5 by Alvarado-Viñas and Manzanilla) and the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Chapter 9 by Chávez Balderas). The wide variety of Maya sites and data types reflects the diversity of scholarship in this region; case studies are drawn from the Classic and Terminal Classic periods and include topics as diverse as hair styles in iconography at Chichén Itzá (Chapter 8 by Miller), face painting at Classic Maya sites (Chapter 6 by Vázquez de Ágredos Pascual et al.), the importance of “crafting” a person through cranial and tooth modification among the Maya of the Usumacinta River region (Chapter 4 by Scherer), and the relationship between cranial modification and linguistic identities throughout the Maya Lowlands (Chapter 3 by Tiesler and Lacadena).

The Andean chapters focus on sites located in present-day Bolivia and Peru, particularly Nasca-, Wari-, and Tiwanaku-affiliated sites. Chapters range from broad spatial and temporal overviews (Chapter 11 by Verano), to important explorations of the meanings of cranial modifications over time (Chapter 14 by Mannheim et al.), to data-rich case studies of specific sites, such as the site of La Ramada in southern Peru (Chapter 12 by Lozada et al.). Contributing scholars move beyond the use of the term “trophy head” to explore nuanced understandings of the wide variety of roles that disembodied or isolated heads can play. For example, Becker and Alconini (Chapter 15) explore heads as ancestors, protectors, trophies, or deviants at the Bolivian site of Wata Wata, focusing on a specific case where three individuals were beheaded during a period of political change.

I particularly liked chapters that highlighted themes common to both regions. For example, the importance of sealing, wrapping, and binding and the role of cranial modification in the ritualized sealing of the head among the Maya are eloquently argued by Duncan and Vail (Chapter 2) and supported by archaeological, epigraphic, iconographic, and linguistic data. In their case study focused on the Andean site of Tiwanaku, Blom and Couture (Chapter 13) similarly use archaeological, iconographic, ethnohistorical, and osteological data to illustrate the importance of containment in the transformative process of head wrapping and cranial modification as heads are transformed into wawa (“seed” or “offspring”). In addition, the complexities of portraiture and the importance of the head are addressed at the Maya site of Palenque (Chapter 7 by Filloy Nadal) and in Wari face-neck jars (Chapter 16 by Vázquez de Arthur).

Coeditors Tiesler and Lozada have admirably advanced our understanding of the head as a “crucial anchor of power” (p. 4). Using a wide range of methodological approaches, this volume very effectively explores emic constructions of power, gender, and identity formation in the past and provides an excellent model for future work on these important topics. With its wide-ranging case studies, this volume will be of broad interest to specialists in Andean and Mesoamerican archaeology and bioarchaeology, as well as scholars with interests in sophisticated theoretical approaches to embodiment, social identities in the past, rituals and their meanings, and war and violence.