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A Cut Above the Rest: Trepanation Among the Post-Imperial Chanka of Ancient PeruDanielle S. Kurin, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

AcknowledgmentsThis research was supportedby a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Aboard Fellowship, award #

P022A090074. Special thanks to Ellen Lofaro, Enmanuel Gomez Choque, and the entire ProyectoBioarqueologicoA ndahuaylas crew.

80th Annual Meeting ofthe AmericanAssociation ofPhysical anthropologistsApril 13-16.2011Minneapolis,MN

References Cited

Trepanation Among the ChankaThisstudycharacterizedtrepanationamongthe Chankaof Andahuaylas,Peru.Trepanationcouldhaveemergedin Chankasocietyasa resultof bothnovelinteractionswithpractitionersfromotherregions,as wellasby trial-and-errorexperimentationfollowingthe collapseof theWariempireca.AD1000.Standardization in trepanation techniquessuggestthat practitioners throughout Andahuaylas shared a common understandingof how toperformcranialsurgery,butlikelyemployed distinctstandardtoolkits.Giventhattrepanationpatternsaresimilar betweensites,thesocialand/orbio-physicalfactorsthat motivatedindividualsto removea portionof thecranialvaultmay havebeenpresent throughouttheregion. Overall,trepanationstended towardsthe leftside of theskull, andgenerally coincidewith distributional patternsin cranial fractures. However, practitionersmay havedirectedtrepanationson predeterminedregionof thevault,and noton acutelociof physicalimpact. Theseresults furthersuggestthat trepanationmayindeedhaveaviolentetiology.Althoughthe practiceitselfwasnot limitedto selectethnicorkingroups,trepanationmayhavebeenreservedforacertainmale-genderedsector ofsociety. Finally, while trepanationby scrappingwasoverwhelminglysuccessful,theboring/drillingmethodmay havebeenintentionally practicedon peri- or post-mortem individualsas a means of better understandingcranialanatomy andimproving techniques. Insum,resultssuggestdistinct(thoughnotintractable),culturally-informedunderstandingsofhowto healanunwellbodyintheancientpast.

DemographyStandards (Buikstraand Ubelaker1994) were used todetermine the sex and age-at-death of trepannedcrania. The general population (n= 213) is uniformlysplit between males and females, but malesunderwent trepanation at a significantly higher rate,compared to females (Fishers exact, p