Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Historico-anthropological studies (Anthropologia Hungarica 9/1-2. Budapest, 1970)
the two condyles occipitales and its portion towards the pars occipitalis. It is well discernible that the process had been made by some fine, filelike object. In two of the three cases one can also see that the widening was not done symmetrically but that it had asymmetrically shifted towards the right side in one case and towards the left in the other. The fact that the enlargement had in both cases irregularly widened at one point and penetrated more deeply into the occipital surface suggests that the primary purpose of the trephining was not the widening of the foramen occipitale magnum for some cause,but the excision of a piece of bone.Owing to a recent damage suffered by a part of- the rim in the third case found at Kál, this element of the pehomenon cannot be studied. There are no traces of osseous proliferation along the trephined margin in either one of the cases," hence the act could have been executed only after death. The artificial widening of the foramen occipitale magnum was found to occur on our home osteological material deriving from the tenth century only in recent years. The first four cases have been published by P. KATONA and I.KISZELY (1969) from the material of three cemeteries. Concerning the purpose of trephining, both authors suggest a healing intervention in the first line, remarking, however, that in none of the cases examined by them had they found any indication of a vital reaction. At the same time, they also put forward ritual considerations as the motivating factor in the execution of the operation. They refer to one of MAXIA's papers (1963) in which that author records recent data from Sardinia according to which popular therapeutics believe to cure epileptic symptoms of living individuals by the application of the pulverized bone, obtained by the artificial widening of the foramen occipitale magnum. The simultaneous presence of the three types of trephinings at Kál implies, beyond its significance in medical history,that this area may have been in the centre of activity of medicine men executing trepanations in the Central Danubian Basin in the tenth century. Distance investigations In attempting to establish parallels with the cranial appearance of the Kál population, I made several calculations with reference to the distance of divers series from Kál. In selecting the series for examination, the following principles have been taken in considération. According to J. SZABÓ* s archeological informations, the cemetery was used in the tenth century, and in the excavated material one can recognize the characteristic object types of the Conquerors arriving around 896 A.D. from the east, the present area of the Soviet Union. Into the comparison there were drawn therefore series deriving from that territory, from the
