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5. ROMAN MEDICINE VS. CRANIAL SURGERY OF THE BARBARS

ROMAN MEDICINE VS. CRANIAL SURGERY OF THE BARBARS

Bereczki Zsolt (1), Paja László (1,2), Madácsy Tamara (1), Pálfi György (1), Sóskuti Kornél (2)

1) University of Szeged, Department of Biological Anthropology, Szeged, Hungary; 2) Hungarian National Museum, National Heritage Center, Szeged, Hungary

Bereczki Zsolt, e-mail: bereczki.zsolt@bio.u-szeged.hu.

Abstract

Surgical trephination is a tradition known worldwide and it has been practiced since the Upper Paleolithic. Its earliest written evidence dates back to the ancient Egypt. Mostly as a method of wound treatment, surgical trephination was also known in ancient Europe following the works of Hippocrates, Celsus, Heliodorus and Galenus. Despite the written sources and the abundance of bioarcheological remains from the era, very few trephined skulls have been unearthed so far from the territory of the Roman Empire. More than 130 surgically trephined skulls have come to light in the territory of today’s Hungary. The earliest evidence derives from the Neolithic. The history of Hungarian trephination research was discussed in details in the works of Lajos Bartucz (1966), Tamás Grynaeus (1996), Péter Tomka (2000) and László Józsa and Erzsébet Fóthi (2007), but none of these works cite any Roman relics from the province of Pannonia (today Western Hungary). A recently published article (Tóth-Kiss, 2008) describes a possible case of surgical trephination from the Roman Age, but the evidence introduced in the paper better corresponds to the diagnosis of enlarged parietal foraminae. However, earlier publications have already mentioned 3 cases from Barbaricum, the Sarmatian territory partly enclosed by Roman provinces (today Eastern Hungary). 3 other Sarmatian cases of surgical trephination have also come to light during the excavations and the osteological research of the last decade. The authors wish to give a detailed description of these 6 Sarmatian cases, compare them with accessible evidence of Roman trephinations from other imperial territories, and put forward a possible explanation of the controversy between the written resources and the osteological evidence.

Keywords

surgical trephination, Roman Age, Sarmatians, Hungary, paleopathology, cranial surgery

Цит.: Bereczki Zsolt, Paja László, Madácsy Tamara, Pálfi György, Sóskuti Kornél ROMAN MEDICINE VS. CRANIAL SURGERY OF THE BARBARS // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2014; 3/2014; с. 105-105