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Medicine in the Middle Age: A case of trepanation from the necropolis in the Castle of Shkodra (Albania)

Médecine au Moyen Âge : un cas de trépanation provenant de la nécropole du château de Shkodra (Albanie)
Ulsi Tota

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1Trepanation is one of the oldest known surgical procedures, involving the removal of a section of the cranial vault with sharp instruments. Evidence of this practice spans from prehistory to the present day.

2The case presented here represents the first data on this medical procedure discovered in the territory of Albania. The individual under study was uncovered during excavations in the cemetery of the Church of Saint Stephen, situated within the fortress of Shkodra. Based on 14C dating it is believed that the individual date to the end of the medieval period. Sex determination was determinated through the observation of the morphological characteristics of the pelvic bones as defined by Bruzek. In determining age, we focused mostly in the observation of the pelvic bone, its auricular surface and to a lesser extent the skull, however this was conditioned by its frequent absence. The stature was determined based on Olivier’s formulas, where the femur was taken as the basic size. Any pathologies were viewed only macroscopically, and their description was based in some cases on important monographs about palaeopathology, such as those by Aufderheide & Rodriguez-Martin (1998), Ortner (2003) and Waldron (2008).

3The trepanation is located on the upper right part of the frontal bone. Detailed observation indicates that the individual did not survive the intervention, as there is no evidence of bone healing or regrowth around the edges of the removed area.

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Ulsi Tota, « Medicine in the Middle Age: A case of trepanation from the necropolis in the Castle of Shkodra (Albania) »Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris [En ligne], 38(S) | 2026, mis en ligne le 16 décembre 2025, consulté le 08 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/17641 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15hiu

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Auteur

Ulsi Tota

Institute of Archaeology of Albania, Academy of Science of Albania, Tirana, Albania ; ulsitota2000[at]yahoo.com

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