Relations between Funerary Cannibalism and Warfare Cannibalism: The Question of Predation
Abstract
The Wari’, a southern Amazonian group of the Txapakura linguistic family, ate their dead and their enemies until at least the beginning of the 1960s. This article argues the continuity between these two forms of cannibalism by demonstrating that the Wari’ conceive the ingestion of the dead as a means of transforming them into prey. Predation – a defining characteristic of Amerindian warfare cannibalism – comprises a crucial means of differentiating two terms set in relationship, whether these terms be allies and enemies, the Wari’ and animals, or the living and the dead. In a world peopled by actual or potential human subjects, to transform the other into prey is to guarantee oneself the exclusive position of human, despite this being an essentially temporary position.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
When the killings took place closer to a Wari' village, heads and limbs were carried raw to the village to be roasted.
“When the killings took place closer to a Wari' village, heads and limbs were carried raw to the village to be roasted (Vilaça, 2000).”
From The Archaeology of Cannibalism: a Review of the Taphonomic Traits Associated with Survival and Ritualistic Cannibalism (2025) · cites this paper as Vilaça, 2000
It is common for groups that engage in funerary endocannibalism to also practice warfare-related exocannibalism, with both forms embedded in symbolic and ritual frameworks.
“In fact, it is common for groups that engage in funerary endocannibalism to also practice warfare-related exocannibalism, with both forms embedded in symbolic and ritual frameworks12–14,64.”
From Evidence of neolithic cannibalism among farming communities at El Mirador cave, Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain (2025) · cites this paper as [14]
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
References 19 · Cited by 113
- Authors
- Vilaca, A.
- Venue
- Ethnos
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2000-01
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83-106
- ISSN
- 0014-1844 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-588X
- OpenAlex
- W1989154729
- Cited by
- 113
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 98.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Ethnos (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Wenner-Gren Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Keywords
- Wari, predation, human-animal relations, death and the living
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
