The New Head Hunters

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With toothless laws and scant resources, Eoe and the National Museum are fighting an unequal battle against well-organized collectors who slip into the country across unmarked borders and ship out containers full of historic pieces, which are highly prized on the international market. In December last year, p.n.g. police were tipped off about two small boxes left at a DHL courier's office in the sleepy port town of Wewak, near the mouth of the Sepik. Both were to be shipped to private addresses in Germany and appeared to have been given security checks by the shipping agent. But when detectives carefully opened the lids and parted the plastic bags filled with sawdust, they found two skulls complete with human hair, clay facial features and eyes made of shells.

The Sepik heads might have fetched thousands of dollars apiece from collectors in the U.S. or Europe. Exporting the skulls without the rarely given special permit carries a maximum six-month jail sentence, Eoe says: it breaches not only the Cultural Property Preservation Act but part of the criminal code related to interfering with human remains. Yet in p.n.g., where corruption is pervasive and police are so poorly resourced they struggle to obtain fuel for mobile patrols, investigating non-violent crime is not a priority. Time has learned that none of the people involved in the apparent attempt to export the two skulls has yet been charged. "I don't know why it's taken so long," says Wewak police detective Kila Tali, who took part in the original seizure. He says the prime suspect, local artifacts trader Ralf Stuttgen, has admitted some involvement in packing the boxes containing the heads and delivering them to the courier's office. A police raid on Stuttgen's home later uncovered a third skull in a box.

In person, 66-year-old Stuttgen, a former Berliner, looks more like the Catholic missionary he aspired to be when he arrived in the country in the 1960s. But the interior of his wooden cottage, perched on the rainforest-covered heights above Wewak, confirms his fascination with tribal objects. Eerie hook-nosed masks and giant carvings cover the walls. Twenty years a dealer, Stuttgen defends the sale of skulls, saying, "It is a victimless crime. I was just trying to help the (local) people. They brought them here. I just helped them mail them," he says. The skulls were not genuine but imitations, he insists, so there could be no loss of cultural heritage and no crime committed. "There are almost no old ones left," he says. "You may see one only in the Port Moresby museum. These are copies. Necrophiles buy them."