Three trephined Early Bronze Age skulls from Bohemia - Jelinek - 2012

Trepanations of Únětice-Culture skulls from the Early Bronze Age are relatively rare in the anthropological literature. In this study, three new finds of trephined skulls of Únětice Culture (Early Bronze Age) from Bohemia are described, constituting another contribution to the palaeopathological study of Bohemian prehistoric populations. The first skull was found at the site of Hřiby near Kolín. The trepanation hole is located on the left side of the frontal bone. It is round and measures about 2.2 cm in diameter. The edges of the trepanation hole exhibit clear traces of healing. The second skull comes from Polepy near Kolín. An oval trepanation hole showing advanced traces of the healing process was found on the right parietal bone in the region of the bregma. The size of the hole is 1.0×1.8 cm. The third skull was also found at Polepy near Kolín (skull No. 22). A round trepanation hole of 1.5 cm in diameter is located in close proximity of the right frontal boss. Unfortunately, its surroundings, including the edges of the hole are somewhat corroded so that we cannot decide with certainty where there were traces of the healing process on the bone or whether the patient survived the operation or not. On the endocranial surface, however, we noticed 2 cm wide belt in which the bone structure is slightly changed, apparently as the result of an inflammatory process, which we have to regard as evidence that the patient survived the operation at least for a short time. This article is a reprint of a previously published article (Jelínek J., 1968: Anthropologie (Brno) 6, 2: 25-32).

Keywords

Trepanation - Early Bronze Age - Únětice Culture - Bohemia

Full text (PDF)

Export citation

Related articles