Modern Day Trepination---to get high

Most people see skulls with holes in them and think even if it's a life-saving procedure, it's scary as hell. Not this guy. He did it so his thinking was permanently altered.

See more at VICE

John Dee Painting Hiding Skulls

Read about it at THE GUARDIAN

And some more John Dee craziness: http://hyperallergic.com/267999/reassembling-the-lost-library-of-a-16th-century-magician-who-spoke-to-angels/

Skeletal Minions

From HERE

Skeleton-Cuddler in the Newspaper

Just read the article

Here's a picture to get you started:

Skull-Shaping in Early Modern French Populations

Most people think of indigenous pre-Colombian South Americans when they think of skull-bandaging and shaping, but this article says that it was happening in rural France unto the modern era.

And apparently they've been doing this a while in France:

From LiveScience

Thanks CH!

Anamorphic skulls

For anyone who wants to be able to explain Holbein's The Ambassadors of 1533.

Or you could just get one of these: 

The Dead French Menagerie

The New York Times recently released this article about a specific sectino of Paris's natural history museum. Here, the skeletons of thousands of animals are displayed in the 19th-century setting, reminding viewers of great naturalists like Buffon.

Inscribed Human Skulls

So this all started with a beautiful office object found on the Colossal Shop's page. Turns out, there's a cheaper option on Etsy, even though I like the idea of a coral-colored skull better:

From here, I recall the myriad skulls I have seen with writing on them. Skulls on their own become separated from the individual that owned it, looking to non-anthropologists and biologists as just another skull. So why not write a caption right on there?

Descartes' skull was inscribed with a poem about the great brain that lived inside it (yeah, I know, body/mind duality. But Descartes also thought that the two might come together in the pineal gland, so the physical body was important to him as well). 

Musée de l'homme, Paris

Other brains were not drawn upon as odes, but as didactic or research models, like this poor soul's noggin used as a phrenology model:

Semmelweis Museum, Budapest

And sometimes, it's just for identification:

Mütter Museum, Philadelphia

*more info can be found by clicking on the pictures

Crystal Skull Face

Click below to see how forensic anthropologists create the terrifying face of the crystal skull vodka bottle:

Take Another Little Piece

From Lapham's Quarterly

And if you are interested in the crazy adventures of Descartes' mortal vessel (and don't mind some major back history of Enlightenment philosophy) I recommend reading Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto.

Thanks for the link, NS!

Lady Bone Models

Women objectifying themselves by making themselves part of the perceived aesthetics of a product. And that product might be a giant skull.

HERE


Even better is a woman staring at Rasputin's preserved cock-and-balls:

Thanks PR!

Archaeologists v. Prop Skulls

via io9

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pre-Columbian skull at the British Museum

And the Mitchell-Hedges skull in question:

Can't get my head around these elongated skulls

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/elongated-peruvian-skulls_n_1322658.html

I Want Your Skulls