Dating from the 1930s or perhaps earlier, this important ritual adornment was displayed by the Bontoc warriors who had taken heads in raids or in battle. Typical traditional Bontoc headresses often integrated the skulls of totem animals, such as hornbill, monkeys, and various other jungle animals perceived to be especially powerful or cunning. The skull on this piece is indeterminate besides being evidently a smaller carnivore. The intact fangs and full set of teeth gape, as if the beast is charging forward, its ghostly unsleeping shell eyes fixed on the enemy or destructive forces that the warrior faces. Tiny seed beads on thin copper wires dangle from the skull itself and on down the struts that support and display the skull above and in front of the warrior. This is a powerfully eerie tribal expression, displaying the ferocity of the Bontoc that still is a part of their unbroken tradition of stubborn confrontation with outside influences for change and deculturalization.

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