Violence in the Early Bronze Age. Diagnosis of skull lesions using anthropological, taphonomic and scanning electron microscopy techniques

Abstract

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Autopsy or anatomical dissection: evidence of a craniotomy in a 17th–eighteenth century burial site (Ravenna, Italy)

“…None of the traumatic lesions on individual US-217's skull showed any evidence of a healing process. The comparison with the literature [9] and the diagnosis of the timing of the lesions carried out with a specific evaluation form [12] (ESM-Tab. S1) indicated that the traumas occurred at or around the time of death.…”

“…Paleopathological investigation and analysis of traumatic injury pattern were carried out using both a morphological and a microscopic approach. The description and evaluation of traumas were performed to assess the nature (accidental or intentional) and timing of the injuries (ante-mortem, peri-mortem or post-mortem) [8][9][10], according to the most applied methods in forensic anthropology.…”

Skeletal trauma in an Iron age context: new insight into the Etruscan population from Spina (Ferrara, Italy)

“…Each trauma was observed macroscopically under powerful illumination and through a magnifying glass. We distinguished between perimortem and postmortem trauma by color, fracture type, and edge shape according to Kimmerle & Baraybar (Kimmerle and Baraybar 2008), and several forensic studies (among others: (Sauer 1984(Sauer , 1998Pasini et al 2018;Ribeiro et al 2020;Scianò et al 2020Scianò et al , 2021. We performed fracture diagnoses based on the diagnostic elements established according to anatomopathological criteria (Aufderheide and Rodríguez-Martín; Roberts and Manchester 1995;Lovell 1997;Sauer 1998;Ortner 2003;Kremer et al 2008;Lewis 2008;Siegel and Saukko 2012).…”

An experimental investigation of cutmark analysis of sharp force trauma in the Bronze Age

“…Skeletal SFT present at other BA sites such as Titriş Höyϋk (Erdal, 2012) and Ballabio (Pasini et al, 2019) demonstrate that SFT produced by bladed weapons are variable. For example, the SFT present at Titriş Höyϋk are characteristic of cleft and puncture injuries, likely produced by weapons such as metal battle axes, daggers and spears (Erdal, 2012).…”

“…While the majority of the cutmark in this study exhibited elliptical shapes, these shapes are likely due to the additional damage sustained to the cutmark such as flaking. The sharp force injuries witnessed at Ballabio, exhibited square shaped injuries with straight margins and a lack of additional damage (Pasini et al, 2019).…”