Bronze Age skull from Jericho, Palestine, 2200-2000

Although this skull shows four separate holes made by the ancient surgical process of trephination, they had clearly begun to heal. This suggests that although highly dangerous, the procedure was by no means fatal. Also known as trepanation, or trepanning, the process of making a hole through the skull to the surface of the brain might be carried out to treat a range of medical conditions or for more mystical reasons. The skull was excavated from a tomb in Jericho, in January 1958 and presented to the Wellcome collection by Dame Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978), the director of the archaeological dig. maker: Unknown maker Place made: Jericho, West Bank