Why does headhunting as a cultural phenomenon occur so often in both the ethnographic and archaeological records? There was certainly no direct transmission of this peculiar cultural trait between societies divided by thousands of years and separated across several continents. Yet, intriguing parallels exist between very diverse groups; between societies as remote from each other as the nineteenth and early twentieth century Nagas of northern India, and the Iron Age populations of southern France. In this paper, I consider some themes relating to headhunting that emerge from a study of ethnographic records in relation to beliefs and ideas about the body, and examine the role of headhunting in promoting, exacerbating and conceptualising inter-societal violence.