A Middle Bronze Age Case of Trephination From Central Anatolia, Turkey

Trephination is known as one of the oldest brain surgeries. They have been identified from many archaeological sites of Old and New continents. Anatolia also has several historical stratigraphy and trephination cases have been reported from various time span and from different places. Anthropological studies on Anatolian skeletal remains determined that the trephinations had been practices from Neolithic to the Ottoman Empire. This paper focuses on one of the ancient brain drilling surgery that was discovered on a skull at Acemhöyük, Aksaray-Turkey the site correspondence directly to Old Assyrian Colony Period in Central Anatolia. The surgery was operated on the left lambdoid suture of a middle aged female individual. At the first step during the macroscopic investigations no significant evidence of healing were observed. However, radiological observations showed the individual did survive for a certain time span after the drilling surgery