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A human skull with wings, carved on early gravestones.
Also known as: Death's head, Winged death head, Skull with wings on a grave
A skull flanked by wings — the death's head. The dominant gravestone motif of New England and much of Britain in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and one of the few whose replacement by gentler imagery is well enough documented to be dated.
A skull with wings, dominant on gravestones in New England and parts of Britain through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, understood as the soul's flight and as a blunt reminder of mortality.
Britain and colonial North America · 17th–early 18th century · Contexts: History
Progressively replaced through the eighteenth century by the winged cherub head and then by the urn and willow, a sequence documented closely enough in New England burial grounds that the motif can help date a stone.
New England · 18th century
The transition is usually read as reflecting a softening of theology — from Puritan emphasis on death and judgement toward a gentler view of the afterlife — though the change in carving fashion and the change in belief are hard to disentangle.
A standard scholarly reading, offered as interpretation rather than as established cause.
A human skull carved facing forward with deep hollow sockets and bared teeth, a spread wing extending from each side.
The winged cherub head replaced the winged skull on gravestones through the eighteenth century.
Both depict a human skull, though the funerary death's head is winged and commemorative while the GHS pictogram is a modern chemical hazard warning.