Archaeologists excavating the fortified hill of Łysa Góra in Poland’s Mazovia region recovered a 2,300-year-old iron tool for cranial surgery, the rarest Celtic object yet found in the country.
“It is even more exceptional than a helmet, since such instruments are known from only a few Celtic sites in Romania, Croatia, and Austria,” said Bartłomiej Kaczyński of the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw, according to Live Science. The implement featured a blade on one end and a spike that once held a wooden handle on the other. Comparisons with surgical sets from burials in Romania and Austria indicated it served in trepanation, the boring of a hole in the skull for medical or ritual reasons.
The spring season also produced La Tène-period brooches, spearheads, an iron axe, and dozens of harness fittings, reinforcing the idea that the hill stood along a trade artery linking Central Europe with the Baltic and Mediterranean.
“The technique and precision of the object’s manufacture point to Celtic metallurgy,” added Kaczyński. He noted that Celtic graves occasionally contained such tools, suggesting operations had both magical and medical aims.
Earlier excavations documented cup-shaped slags, a small iron anvil, and other evidence of on-site metalworking. Some recently recovered objects may have been made on the hill in the Celtic style, Kaczyński said, according to HeritageDaily.
Defenses varied across the settlement. Light palisades bordered the northern slope, while a larger palisade and moat cut off the southern elevation. “Probably the entire life of the community was concentrated in this southern part,” Kaczyński told Nauka w Polsce. Imported bronze fragments and amber beads clustered there; amber drew high demand around the Mediterranean, and the Celts may have fortified Łysa Góra to secure their position on the amber trail.
The group that reached Mazovia in the fourth century BCE likely traveled with specialists. “The Celts arrived not only with a medic but also with a blacksmith who shaped objects in a style known to his people,” Kaczyński said, according to Live Science. The partnership would explain the coexistence of surgical tools and worked weapons such as the bronze-and-iron helmet unearthed last year.
Łysa Góra sits hundreds of kilometres beyond the main La Tène heartland and mixes elements of the local West Baltic Barrow Culture with Celtic imports. The team ended its second field season this month and installed an educational trail featuring replicas of the helmet, the trepanation tool, and other finds. Visitors will be able to follow the route and learn how warriors, traders, healers, and metalworkers turned the hilltop into one of the most northeasterly operating rooms of the Iron Age.
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