Does a relationship exist between leadership decapitation and the abuse of civilians during a civil war? This project creates a new data set in combination with existing data on leadership change and civil war termination to determine whether leadership decapitation in rebel groups that use terrorist strategies affects the likelihood of civilian abuse. A study is done on 44 cases of decapitation where the leader of a rebel group was arrested, killed, or replaced during the course of their respective nation’s civil war. This project also conducted a case study on the behavior of a rebel group in the country of Algeria during their civil war. The results show that most groups utilize the same strategies before and after the decapitation of their leader and also attack the same targets. Looking at the short term after the date of decapitation, groups are more likely to utilize the same attack method and attack the same targets. The results also indicate that leadership decapitation does not alter the tactic utilized by a group during a civil war after the date of decapitation. Leadership decapitation also does not increase the likelihood of civilian abuse within one, two, or three months after the date of decapitation. If a group was abusing civilians before the death, arrest, or replacement of their leader, then they will continue to abuse civilians after the date of decapitation. Ultimately, understanding the causes behind the violent methods used by terrorist and rebel groups will help promote conflict resolution and prevent the use of violent means against civilians.

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Decapitated Vs. Stomach buried – A study of decapitated people and stomach placed people in Iron Age in Sweden and Denmark. This essay is about decapitated persons in graves and those buried on their stomach in the Iron Age in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis is to compare these graves by six perspectives; location of the grave, construction of the grave, grave goods, sex, age and interpretations of the grave. Out of this I found out if there are any different patterns of these graves, except that they are decapitated and places on their stomach. I compare between fifteen graves located on their stomach, nine decapitated graves, four graves that involve both and eight graves that do not contain any of it.

How does the killing or capture of rebel leaders affect the ends of conflict? Although decapitation scholars argue that it reduces the duration of conflict by disrupting rebel group organizational capacity, few have ever researched what effects decapitations could have on peace negotiations. After reviewing the literature within the field of decapitation and the ripeness theory of negotiation this paper tests the hypothesis that Successful decapitations are likely to increase the duration of time it takes for the government to agree on seeking a negotiated end to their conflict. This small n-study uses Mill´s method of disagreement to compare the civil wars in Colombia and El Salvador where decapitations did and did not take place respectively. Although a weak correlation exists the casual mechanism did not find support and therefor the hypothesis was rejected. There was however a relation between the presence of decapitation and government perception of stalemate that could affect how a conflict reaches the point of ripeness.

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No / Archaeological work in advance of construction at a site on the edge of York, UK, yielded human remains of prehistoric to Romano-British date. Amongst these was a mandible and cranium, the intra-cranial space of which contained shrunken but macroscopically recognizable remains of a brain. Although the distinctive surface morphology of the organ is preserved, little recognizable brain histology survives. Though rare, the survival of brain tissue in otherwise skeletalised human remains from wet burial environments is not unique. A survey of the literature shows that similar brain masses have been previously reported in diverse circumstances. We argue for a greater awareness of these brain masses and for more attention to be paid to their detection and identification in order to improve the reporting rate and to allow a more comprehensive study of this rare archaeological survival.

No / This paper reviews the osteological evidence for execution in Anglo-Saxon England, which, in the cases of modern analysis, can reveal considerable detail about the methods of decapitation, in particular, and it also provides a critical appraisal of the considerably less reliable antiquarian reports. We suggest that secure evidence for execution, principally decapitation, can be identified through modern osteological analysis but it is limited, and we also argue that assertions made in antiquarian excavation reports about apparent examples of execution need to be treated with caution.

This master's thesis deals with sacrifice by decapitation. Its goal is to describe systematicaly this phenomenon which was widely practiced in the Mesoamerican area. To accomplish this there were firstly introduced the main interpretation lines of human sacrifice. The importance of maize for the Mesoamerican culture was described in the next chapter. The third part of this thesis introduces some Aztec festivities which are connected with ritual decapitation in Sahagún's Historia general. Then this thesis deals with the main aspects of the Mesoamerican ballgame and its connection with the story of the Hero twins from Popol Vuh is introduced here and analyzed. The fourth chapter describes the methods of ritual decapitation. It deals with the question of the fixation method described by Sahagún as "espaldas con espaldas" and the question of the ritual instrument which should have been used in this situation. Then it describes this method in the context of Maya sacrifices. The final part deals with the posthumous dealing with the head and the body of the sacrifices. Big part is given to the problem of tzompantli and the treating of the body. Two main techniques are presented here - skinning and ritual cannibalism. Then it describes the Maya techniques of treating the head which include storing skulls...