Cranial injuries on a skull from the Ancient Bronze Age (Ballabio, LC, Italy): a natural or an anthropic origin?

This paper discusses the results of the analysis carried out on a female skull coming from a collective burial, dated to the Ancient Bronze Age in Italy (Ballabio, LC), showing clear evidence of human intentional intervention. The skull shows some series of scraping marks on the external cranial vault, crossing longitudinally the parietal bones. The contemporaneous presence of periostitis on the frontal bone and the provenance of the finding from a secondary burial context (a typical funerary habit documented in Italy during the Copper Age and Ancient Bronze Age) makes the case difficult to be interpreted (scalping? surgery? scarification? ritual practice linked to secondary deposition?). The analysis, carried out on the skull surface (stereomicroscopy observation, scanning electron microscopy analysis, 3D virtual reconstruction), were aimed to discriminate intentional marks from modifications due to taphonomical processes and to state the moment of their formation (peri- or post-mortem). In this paper we discuss the possibility that scraping marks are connected to a ritual practice, either held by the individual during life with specific symbolic or social value, or which had taken place after death or at the moment of secondary burial.