The New Head Hunters

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Stuttgen says the skulls were being sold to foreign buyers for about 600 kina ($150) each. He also says he suspects local authorities are hoping he will offer a bribe to make the case go away, but he refuses to identify his supplier or give details about the intended recipients of the grisly cargo. The boxes the skulls were packed in, however, provide better clues. They are clearly addressed to individuals in Germany. One recipient is a natural-therapies practitioner who declined to speak to Time about the skulls but says he does know Stuttgen. Efforts to contact the other man were unsuccessful.

But for Eoe and his team, it is all but impossible to bring legal action against overseas buyers; they struggle even to track down the local suppliers and dealer. Museum enforcement officer Sebastian Haraha is frustrated by their lack of results. One dealer slipped into p.n.g. from neighboring Indonesia, he says, and managed to take three truckloads of artifacts back across the border without inspection by any authority. "I was trying to catch up with him, but every place I went to I just missed him," says Haraha, fanning out a wad of photographs of items he is attempting to trace."We don't know what he ended up taking out."

The sales often amount to theft, Eoe explains, with unworldly villagers paid far less than the objects' real value. "The dealers buy artifacts using large numbers of low-denomination notes," he says, "so the villagers see this large amount of money and let the object go for much less than it is worth." Among the most valuable are the intricately carved poles that support the roof of a village's haus tambaran. These poles, made from a special hardwood, represent the most powerful spirit in a village and can fetch as much as $100,000 at international auctions, says Eoe. Haraha says he is seeking to question Stuttgen about some spirit-house poles that were put up for sale recently in Wewak.

Sometimes, however, it's the collectors who are the ones conned. The skilled carvers of the Sepik are also master forgers - and skulls feature prominently in their repertoire. Anthropologist Garnier examined images of the seized skulls for Time, and believes they are, as Stuttgen claims, modern imitations. Should they prove to be genuine, he says they could be worth more than $12,000 in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, which has become a clearing house for such items. Even if they are not ancient items, however, the bones have to be sourced from somewhere. Eoe says the villagers may have been taking skulls from graves or retouching old ones - a scenario which could have unpleasant implications for those responsible. In traditional society, says anthropologist Nancy Sullivan, it's believed that "if you have done something (wrong), the shame and guilt will make you sick.''