head on a spike

The earliest known archeological evidence for mounting heads on stakes has been identified in Sweden, at a Mesolithic site in Kanaljorden, in the floor of a dried lake, dating to 8,000 years ago.Gummeson et al. 2018. There, archeologists recovered human crania with the remnants of wooden stakes still in place within the two crania. The crania exhibited evidence of blunt force trauma that looked to have resulted from a violent confrontation. Archeologists interpreted the wooden stakes as evidence that the heads had been mounted for display by members of the Swedish Mesolithic hunter-gatherer culture.

In England, the heads of criminals, especially those convicted of treason, were mounted for display on London Bridge from about 1300 until about 1660.Thornbury 1878.London Bridge Head Spikes Heads were usually dipped in tar to slow down the decomposition process. Criminal punishment was sometimes posthumous, as the body of Oliver Cromwell was exhumed so that it could be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his head was mounted on a spike and displayed for 30 years.Fitzgibbons 2008: 31.

• William Wallace ({{circa}} 1270–1305)
• Simon Fraser (d. 1306)
• Jack Cade (c. 1420–1450)
• Richard of York (1411–1460)
• Edmund, Earl of Rutland (1443–1460)
• John Fisher (1469–1535)
• Thomas More (1478–1535)
• Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540)
• Richard Gwyn (c. 1537–1584)
• Muiris Mac Ionrachtaigh (d. 1585)
• Fiach McHugh O'Byrne (1534–1597)
• Feidhlimidh Riabhach Mac Dhaibheid (d. 1608)
• Cathaoir Ó Dochartaigh (1587–1608)
• Terence O'Brien (1600-1651)
• Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)
• Redmond O'Hanlon (c. 1640–1681)Stephen Dunford (2000), The Irish Highwaymen, Merlin Publishing. Pages 103–104.
• Blackbeard (c. 1680–1718)
• Éamonn an Chnoic (died c. 1724)Stephen Dunford (2000), The Irish Highwaymen, Merlin Publishing. Pages 47–48.
• Jacques de Flesselles (1730–1789)
• Bernard-René Jourdan de Launay (1740–1789)
• Staker Wallace (1733–1798)
• John Murphy (1753–1798)
• Vela Peeva (1922–1944)

File:Rex Whistler - Sketch of a Head impaled on a Pike 1924.jpg|A sketch of a head impaled on a pike, included in a letter to Ronald Fuller dated 1924

File:Heads on pikes.jpg|Drawing of the French Revolution: "Aristocratic Heads on Pikes"

File:Jacques de Flesselles.jpg|Engraving c. 1789 of French militia hoisting the heads of Jacques de Flesselles and the Marquis de Launay on pikes

File:Epouvantail pour les ennemis de la France Fleisch.jpg|Historical caricature on the Reign of Terror

• Battlefield cross, a symbolic replacement of a cross made up of the soldier's rifle stuck into the ground with helmet on top
• Decapitation
• Headhunting
• Impalement, in which the object is alive at the time of penetration
• London Bridge
• Mounting points and synonyms:
• spike, stake, pike, polearm, pale, picket

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite journal|title= Keep Your Head High: Skulls on stakes and cranial trauma in Mesolithic Sweden.|journal=Antiquity|last1=Gummeson|first1=Sara|first2=Fredrik|last2= Hallgren|first3=Anna |last3=Kjellstrom|year=2018|volume=92|number=361|pages=74–90|doi=10.15184/aqy.2017.210|s2cid=165241018|doi-access=free}}
• {{cite book |last=Fitzgibbons |first=Jonathan |year=2008 |title=Cromwell's Head |publisher=The National Archives |location=Kew |isbn=978-1-905615-38-4}}
• {{Cite web|title=London Bridge head spikes: From 1300 to 1660|work=London Remembers|url= https://www.londonremembers.com/subjects/london-bridge-head-spikes |accessdate=12 March 2022}}
• {{Cite book|last=Thornbury|first=Walter|chapter=London Bridge|title=Old and New London|volume=2|pages=9–17|url= http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol2/pp9-17 |accessdate=12 March 2022}}

Category:Warning systems