‘Transgressive Objects’ in America: Mimesis and Violence in the Collection of Trophies during the Nineteenth Century Indian Wars
Based on my own earlier theorising of ‘mimesis at war’, and taking up Simon Harrison's suggestion that trophies made from human body parts are best explained as ‘transgressive objects’, the article focuses on a particular trophy, a nineteenth century Cheyenne finger necklace. Its history illustrates that trophy-taking was part of a broader circulation of practices of war among native warriors and the American military in the West. Finally, trophy-taking made its way into the academic and scientific institutions that provide the discursive frame for present debates about war in anthropology and archaeology.