ABSTRACT
Trepanations1 have been reported in human skeletal remains recovered from archaeological contexts in Ireland since the 1920s (Walmsley, 1923). Although the current location of a few of the older finds is uncertain, most of the 10 possible cases reported between the 1920s and 1992 (Buckley and Ó Donnabháin, 1992) were curated and are available for re-evaluation. Since the early 1990s, the curation and analysis of human remains from all archaeological sites in the Republic of Ireland have been mandatory (Buckley et al., 1999). As a result of this development, the number of trepanations reported in the Irish archaeological literature has almost doubled and now stands at 18. Although this is partly a function of the higher levels of archaeological excavation in Ireland in recent decades, there can be little doubt that the archaeological visibility of trepanation has improved now that all human remains recovered during excavations are analysed by personnel with bioarchaeological training.
