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

This paper illustrates the results of analyses carried out on a skull coming from the ancient Bronze Age burial site of Ballabio (LC), Northern Italy, (3230 ± 90 B.P.). It is a mixed funerary context, characterized by two primary graves in which corpses were buried for a certain time before being exhumed and laid to rest in collective secondary graves. One specimen belongs to a 17-20 years old female. The skull shows several interesting anomalies: metopism, an area of 5 cm of periostitis located in the middle of the frontal bone, marked vascular sulci at both frontal sides, linear marks that intersect and cover the frontal bone and the parietals. The analyses were carried out in order to try to establish the connection between the identified scraping marks and the periostitis on the frontal bone as well as the moment in which they were realized (ante-, peri- or post-mortem).