Healed Depressed Parasagittal Skull Fractures—A Feature of Archaic Australian Aboriginal Remains

Abstract

The skeletal remains of eight Australian Aboriginals with healed depressed skull fractures were examined. Male:female ratio 5:3; age range 20-60 yrs. Burial dates by C dating in three cases were 500 years BP (n = 2) and 1300 BP. There were 13 healed depressed skull fractures manifested by shallow indentations of cortical bone and thinning of diploe, with no significant disturbance of the inner skull tables. Nine (69%) were located within 35 mm of the sagittal suture/midline. These lesions represent another acquired feature that might be helpful in suggesting that a skull is from a tribal Aboriginal individual and may be particularly useful if the remains are represented by only fragments of calvarium. While obviously not a finding specific to this population, these healed injuries would be consistent with the possible results of certain types of conflict behavior reported in traditional Aboriginal groups that involved formalized inflicted blunt head trauma.