An overview of trepanation in ancient Greece

Liston, Fox and Day survey published evidence for trepanation in Greece and the Aegean and then examine two cases, one from Kavousi Vronda in Crete and one from Laganidia Kallithea in the Peloponnese. They take up possible purposes, diagnostic criteria, surgical techniques and tools, and evidence of healing, drawing on skeletal remains, lesion shape and position, cut surfaces, ancient medical writings and reported surgical instruments.

Examples range from Bronze Age burials at Mycenae, Lerna, Knossos, Asine and Kirra to an early Iron Age case at Kavousi Vronda, a 7th-century BCE burial at Abdera, a Roman-period cranium from Paphos and a medieval case at Corinth. Differential diagnosis weighs blade wounds, depressed fractures, congenital defects and post-mortem damage, and the Paphos cranium is cited as a blade injury that resembles a scraped trepanation (pp. 153–155).

Liston, Fox and Day argue that some Bronze Age examples made by grooving may have served ritual purposes, possibly after death, since none shows reported healing and some bone roundels were buried with skulls, and that scraping is the predominant method in Greek cases with evidence of survival. Trepanation, they argue, should be considered when cranial trauma is assessed. At Kavousi Vronda they describe a healed trepanation on cremated skull fragments and suggest that three iron tools from the cremation graves may be scrapers or raspers used on cranial wounds; at Laganidia Kallithea they identify a possible healed trepanation on a parietal fragment from Burial Lambda of Tomb 15 (pp. 155–156).