Denis Sinor
University of Indiana

The Practice of Scalping in Inner Asia

35^th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, 1992

The practice of scalping is usually linked with North American Indians but the first written record of the custom is that given by Herodotus (5th c. B.C.) in his description of the Scythians. In Inner Asia, the 2nd kurgan of Pazyryk in the Altai contained the mummy of a scalped man. The paper would show that to these well-known instances should be added data culled from the folklore of the Siberian Voguls and from a Latin source of the 14th century.