Héthy Zoltán szerk.: Bihari Múzeum Évkönyve 3. (Berettyóújfalu, 1982)

TERMÉSZETTUDOMÁNY — NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN - The Trephined Skull from Bihardancsháza (County Hajdú-Bihar, Hungary)

László Szathmáry THE TREPHINED SKULL FROM BIHARDANCSHÁZA (COUNTY HAJDÚBIHAR, HUNGARY) The author gives account of the results of the anthropological examinations of a trephined skull dating from the 10—11th centuries. The examined person is male ( ), the degree of sexualisation is +1.2 (Table 1), and the person died at the age between 20 and 30. After describing the quantitative (Table 2) and qualitative features the author comes to the representation of the trephined opening. Its diameter is 64 mm's sagitally and 70 mm's transversally measured on the lamina externa, while measured on the lamina interna in the same directions it is 46 mm's and 51 mm's. The trephining was made with a push-plough technique. A big, definite oblique circum-resection followed the circum-erosion and then resected parts were lifted out. Then a surface-evening, retouching operation followed resulting in tiny resection-furrows (this cut-surface is suggestive of the case of erosion-technique). These furrows reformed the surface of the primary circum-resection so much that the latter s traces can be perceived only on certain outside parts of the edge in the depth of the lamina externa. In the territory of Hungary a similar kind of technique was used in the cases of the 10th century skulls found in Tatabánya, Vereb and Karos (in the 12th grave), while in the cases of the findings of Nagylók, Pestszentlőrinc and Soroksár no traces of tiny retouching-resections concealing the surface of the primary resection can be perceived. On the other hand retouching-resection occurs in the cases of some findings where a technique different or not entirely similar could be presumed (Csoma, Egyek and Gerendás). In the next part of the study the problem of survival and that of the motive of trephining is dealt with. The person whose trephined skull was found in Bihardancsháza survived the operation only a few days. As the trephining is finished technically, it could be tooken certain that death came not during the operation. In the cases of skull-trephinings dating from the 10th century in the territory of Hungary — altogether there are 26 trephined skulls involving the skull from Bihardancsháza, too — the proportion of survival is obave 50 per cent. At the same time only one of the 20 trephined persons died in Budapest clinics in the 1880's survived the operation (this means a 5 per cent survival); and only a 2.8 per cent survival could be shown on the basis of the examinations made on 36 trephined skulls coming from cemetaries used in the 18th and 19th centuries in Buda and Pest. The author seems to find the reason for the great difference between the percentage proportions of survival in the 10th and in the 18—19th centuries in the change of the motives of trephining operations. While in the 18th and 19th centuries trephined operations were fulfilled only in the cases of serious endogenous diseases (and in these cases there was hardly any chance of survival independently of the success of the operation), in the Hungary of the 10th century trephining operations may have been indicated primarily by exogenous factors. In these cases the chance of survival equalled with the chance of the natural healing of the injury. Due to the succesful operations the apprecation of trephining and the training of the persons performing these operations (— the ,,samán'"s) was gradually growing and this favoured to the spreading of the different forms of this rite and also to the developping of different misterious ideas in connection with the rite. In some cases these ideas meant a reason similarly serious to exogenous diseases for opening the skull. In spite of the fact that in the body of beliefs of the Hungarians the traces of the healing of so-called „soul-losung" disseases by trephining could be found, in the 40