New Thoughts on an Unusual Burial in Sardinia

CAGLIARI, ITALY—According to a Live Science report, Dario D’Orlando of the University of Cagliari and his colleagues examined excavation records of Sardinia’s Monte Luna necropolis, which was unearthed in the 1970s, and the skeletal remains of a woman who had been buried face down there. The new study confirmed that the woman was between the ages of 18 and 22 when she died sometime between the end of the third century and the beginning of the second century B.C. D’Orlando explained that evidence of blunt-force trauma, perhaps from a fall, was found in the skull, in addition to a square hole consistent with a sharp-force injury from a Roman nail. He thinks the blunt-force injury could be the result of a fall during an epileptic seizure, while the sharp-force injury may have been inflicted after death to prevent her epilepsy from spreading to others—an ancient Greek remedy described in the first century A.D. by the Roman general known as Pliny the Elder. Such Roman ideas may have emerged in Sardinia after the end of the first Punic War in 241 B.C., D’Orlando explained. To read about recent research in Sardinia, go to "Tyrrhenian Traders."