ABSTRACT
Skull trepanation in early times was independently practiced in many areas of the world, with the highest New World concentrations in Peru and adjacent Bolivia (Hrdlicka, 1939; Lisowski, 1967; Margetts, 1967; O’Connor and Walker, 1951). Among the South American Indians, trepanation was most common in ancient times, less common in the preColumbian (ca 1492 AD) era and still more uncommon at the time of Spanish contact (ca 1520s) and in the post-Columbian era (Lisowski, 1967). As the evidence for cranial surgery by the early Indian peoples of present day Mexico, the United States (USA), and Canada is relatively scarce, we believed it would be of interest to analyze the available
anthropological data on North America as a whole. This includes the culturally distinct regions of Mesoamerica within the borders of Mexico (Hammond, 2000; Marcus and Flannery, 2000).
