A Trepanned Skull of the Beaker Period from Dorset and the Practice of Trepanning in Prehistoric Europe

Abstract

The circumstances of the discovery of the trepanned skull described in this paper may be briefly summarised here: the full report of the excavations during which it was discovered will appear in a forthcoming volume of Archaeologia. In the summer of 1938 I carried out excavations on behalf of H.M. Office of Works on a group of round barrows on Crichel Down, Dorset, some 5 miles north of the town of Blandford. One of these barrows (no. 14 of the forthcoming report), a very low and inconspicuous mound about 20 feet in diameter, was found to cover a grave cut in the chalk containing a crouched human burial. The skeleton lay on its left side with the head bent slightly forward, the legs flexed so that the heels were nearly touching the pelvis, the left arm extended and the right arm flexed so that the hand rested on the shoulder. At the foot of the grave lay a beaker of Type B1 on its side, the base resting against the right tibia of the skeleton. (Fig. 1).The whole burial was entirely typical of Beaker Period inhumations, and it was not until the skull was removed from the grave that it was found that it bore a large opening in the left parietal, and that into that opening the piece of bone which had been removed (by a careful process of grooving and ultimate excision) had been replaced before the individual had been laid in the grave. We were clearly in the presence of an exceedingly fine example of trepanning, and two points were immediately apparent, namely that the individual had not survived the operation, there being no evidence of healing on the edge of the opening, and that the replaced roundel of bone must have been strapped or bandaged into place before burial. As the skull was lifted, the roundel remained behind on the floor of the grave, and in the original deposition of the body something must have been done to secure it in position.

The Ciempozuelos Necropolis skull: a case of double trepanation?

“…Something similar also occurs with the extra-peninsular Bell Beaker trepanations that are also not abundant, a fact that was already confirmed by Piggott (1940) in his day. Gerhardt (1953;181), in his exhaustive anthropological study, pointed out the absence of trepanations in German Bell Beaker contexts, a fact that seems to be confirmed in the present day (Alt, personal communication) as well as being a marginal phenomenon in other regional groups such as the Austrians (Teschler-Nikola, personal communication) and somewhat more frequent in the Italian archipelagos, although from late Beaker Bell contexts (Harrison, 1980;Tusa, 1987;Germaná, 1998).…”

Evidence of trepanations in a medieval population (13th-14th century) of northern Spain (Gormaz, Soria)

“…In Europe, a sex bias has been observed in trepanation techniques: the grooving technique is more common than the others in male individuals, while the scraping technique was the most used in female individuals (Campillo, 2007). Female cases of trepanation have been found even in very ancient times (see Prioreschi, 1996), but are uncommon, as this procedure seems to have been predominantly carried out on adult males (Piggott, 1940;Campillo, 1984;Jennbert, 1991). Examples of trepanned children skulls are also very rare (Jordanov et al, 1988;Verano, 2003;Andrushko and Verano, 2008) and some authors have proposed that this probably reflects (i) the lower childhood frequency of the susceptible disorders that were treated by cranial surgery; (ii) an uneven conservancy of fragile skeletal remains; or (iii) a reluctance of ancient physicians to expose children to potentially life-threatening surgical techniques (MarianiCostantini et al, 2000).…”

Cranioplasty in ancient Peru: a critical review of the evidence, and a unique case from the Cuzco area

“…Piggott (1940), who excavated and described the skeleton, hypothesised that the bone disk was replaced before burial and fixed in place with a bandage or some other device. The margins of the trepanation showed no evidence of bony reaction, however, indicating that the patient had not survived.…”