Wicker man

The wicker man is the name given to a large figure of wickerwork and wood in which, according to some Graeco-Roman writers, the Gauls burned human and animal sacrifices. The two main accounts are Julius Caesar's de Bello Gallico (50s BC) and Strabo's Geographica (early 1st c. AD), both probably deriving from the lost ethnography of the Greek philosopher Posidonius (ca. 135–51 BC). Caesar describes huge wickerwork images filled with living men and set on fire, while Strabo describes a colossus of straw and wood into which humans and animals were placed before being burned. The English term wicker man is modern, and the classical sources do not give the construction a distinct name. Two further notices, in Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BC) and in the 9th-century AD Commenta Bernensia, describe the burning of victims, but not a wickerwork anthropomorphic figure.

The reliability of these accounts remains disputed. Modern scholars debate whether the figure was necessarily human-shaped, what purpose the rite served, and whether the reports preserve a real Gaulish practice or reflect Graeco-Roman stereotypes about barbarian human sacrifice. Some academics regard the reports as having a core of authenticity, especially because human sacrifice in Gaul is mentioned by several ancient writers and is partly supported by archaeological evidence interpreted as ritual killing. Others stress that no archaeological find securely attests the burning of victims inside wicker figures, that Caesar and Strabo may depend on the same written source rather than first-hand observations, and that the rite is not shown to have been widespread or frequent.

The modern image of the wicker man has been shaped mainly by later reception. Aylett Sammes's Britannia Antiqua Illustrata (1676) gave the brief classical notices a lasting visual form as a huge male wicker figure filled with human victims. James George Frazer later linked the rite to European fire customs in his influential work The Golden Bough (1913). Robin Hardy's 1973 horror film The Wicker Man made the burning human-shaped figure one of the most familiar modern images of pagan sacrifice. Since the film, wicker-man burnings have appeared in many modern festivals and re-enactments.