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 i
tems of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicis
ts promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed he
ad is as contentious and compelling as ever.
