Cranial Surgery in Italy During the Bronze Age.

Skull vault trepanation is a surgical practice that has been found in prehistoric human remains. We carried out a review of the literature on cranial trepanations performed during the Bronze Age in Italy. In total, 19 individuals, most of whom were adult males, with 33 trepanations have been reported, including a new specimen from the Italian Middle Bronze Age (1700-1400 BCE), found at Grotta della Monaca (Calabria). The evidence of cranial trepanations is geographically uneven across Italy, with the highest occurrence in Sardinia. Several trepanation techniques were applied in Italy during this period, where the drilling method was the most common solitary technique utilized. The survival rate of 79.3% in Bronze Age Italy suggests that trepanation was carried out with remarkable success. This analysis gives further insight into ancient human behavior and enhances our knowledge of surgical practices in antiquity, shedding light on the origins of neurosurgery.

First Bronze Age Human Mitogenomes from Calabria (Grotta Della Monaca, Southern Italy).

The Italian peninsula was host to a strong history of migration processes that shaped its genomic variability since prehistoric times. During the Metal Age, Sicily and Southern Italy were the protagonists of intense trade networks and settlements along the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, ancient DNA studies in Southern Italy are, at present, still limited to prehistoric and Roman Apulia. Here, we present the first mitogenomes from a Middle Bronze Age cave burial in Calabria to address this knowledge gap. We adopted a hybridization capture approach, which enabled the recovery of one complete and one partial mitochondrial genome. Phylogenetic analysis assigned these two individuals to the H1e and H5 subhaplogroups, respectively. This preliminary phylogenetic analysis supports affinities with coeval Sicilian populations, along with Linearbandkeramik and Bell Beaker cultures maternal lineages from Central Europe and Iberia. Our work represents a starting point which contributes to the comprehension of migrations and population dynamics in Southern Italy, and highlights this knowledge gap yet to be filled by genomic studies.