Description

Book Synopsis
Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

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    A Paperback / softback by Dr Frances Larson

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      View other formats and editions of Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Dr Frances Larson

      Publisher: Granta Books
      Publication Date: 01/10/2015
      ISBN13: 9781783780563, 978-1783780563
      ISBN10: 1783780568
      Also in:
      History History: specific events and topics Anthropology Science & Nature Popular science

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.

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