This is the nailed skull of an Iberian warrior preserved in the National Archaeological Museum.

According to researchers, ancient Iberians were some of the peoples who prepared and publicly displayed the severed heads of their defeated enemies as trophies, sometimes alongside seized weapons.

They even used to hammer large nails through the severed heads (some 40 such heads were found in the Iberian settlement of Ullastret, for instance).

This ritual custom and its staging reaffirmed leaders’ power.