A group of scientists have discovered a mummified head dating back 350 years that was part of an unusual binding ritual.
The skull was part of a museum collection for at least a century, being taken from an archaeological ruin in the late 1800s.
At the time, sending human remains back to European museums was a regular practice, with documentation of written exchanges between collectors and anthropologists being commonplace.
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Scientists from the University of Geneva, led by Claudine Abegg, shared their research into the mummified human artefact dating back over 350 years.
The researchers found that the skull was donated to the museum in Lausanne in 1876 by a Swiss collector, who had obtained it in what is now modern-day Bolivia.
The skull was thought to belong to an Inca man, but incisions and markings in the skull point to something entirely different, reports Need To Know.
Its shape shows that the man had undergone a form of ‘cranial deformation’ when he was younger – a practice that was common in pre-Colombian South America, which consists of tightly binding and elongating a head over many years.
Evidence points towards the skull belonging to a member of someone high social class.
The findings also show that the skull, underwent a process called trepanation, which consists of a hole being created in the skull by either drilling or scraping a piece of skull away.
This was typically done to relieve pain, such as headaches or treat conditions such as epilepsy, as it was believed to be a way to purge evil spirits.
Researchers speculated that the trepanation might have had a ritual or social purpose, as there were no obvious signs of trauma.
The mummified head is still in the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History in Lausanne, Switzerland, although it is not on public display.
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