Oxford Academics Drank From a Human Skull Cup Until 2015

Professor Dan Hicks, who serves as a curator of world archaeology at Worcester College, is releasing a novel about some historical pieces. One of those pieces he’s writing about is a chalice made of a human skull that the Oxford-based college used as part of celebratory dinners.

Drinking out of human bones isn’t crazy; we all know that centuries ago, there weren’t Stanley cups everywhere or stemless wine glasses at everyone’s disposal. What is crazy, though, is that people at the college were utilizing this skull up until 2015.

In Hicks’ book, he explains how the “cup” possibly comes from the corpse of an enslaved woman. He reveals the campus stopped using the chalice due to ethical and legal disputes, which obviously isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is that it was still a thing into the mid-2010s.

UK College Officials Drank out of a Human Skull at Dinners… Until 2015

The skull was first donated in 1946 by a former student whose family had it in their possession.

The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on African reparations and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy provided a thoughtful refute as to why this discovery is so despicable from a facility with such high stature as Worcester, “It is sickening to think of Oxford dons, sitting in the bastion of privilege, itself enriched by the proceeds of centuries of colonial violence and extraction, swilling drink out of a human skull that may have belonged to an enslaved person and has been so little valued that it has been turned into an object.”

According to The Guardian, a spokesperson for the school admitted the skull’s use but did not provide any details on how often it was used, other than it was “severely limited” after 2011. I mean, I’m not sure how much that makes it better. By 2011, I think the idea of drinking out of a human skull was a bit out of style… by a century or two.

The chalice has since been stowed away in its archives, according to the outlet, and access to it is “permanently denied.”

Perhaps the college can tap into its overinflated tuition money to buy itself a new celebratory cup that, you know, isn’t tampering with the deceased.