Miklós Kásler - Zoltán Szentirmay (szerk.): Identifying the Árpád Dynasty Skeletons Interred in the Matthias Church. Applying data from historical, archaeological, anthropological, radiological, morphological, radiocarbon dating and genetic research (Budapest, 2021)

CHAPTER THREE – Archaeological, anthropological and radiological data

adults. With the spread of Christianity, the custom disappeared, which makes it all the more peculiar, and inexplicable to this day, that King Béla

Ill

’s skull without a doubt showed figurative trepanation long after the conversion to Christianity took place. Éry and

her working group believed that the skeleton from the third grave labelled II/52_3 held to this day in the crypt of the Matthias Church was of unknown origin and not authentic, and had been swapped with another, so they did not include it in their monograph. When determining the origin to be unknown, they relied too much on anthropological dating, but that is not reliable in case of heavily damaged bone structure, and as we see, their conclusion proved to be incorrect.

91