The islands of Titicaca and Koati, illustrated . goramong the Indians of high Peru. We were told that theoperation is and was performed by persons without anyinstruction in surgery, and in order to remove splintersfrom broken skulls. In regard to the instruments used, ourinformants knew nothing, but they declared to have seenindividuals who survived the operation for many years,with a piece of mate (gourd or squash) in their skulls, overwhich the skin had been stitched together. A friend ofmine, Don Antonio de Ocampo, told me that in one of hisrambles at Ancon, on the Peruvian coast, he stumbl
The islands of Titicaca and Koati, illustrated . goramong the Indians of high Peru. We were told that theoperation is and was performed by persons without anyinstruction in surgery, and in order to remove splintersfrom broken skulls. In regard to the instruments used, ourinformants knew nothing, but they declared to have seenindividuals who survived the operation for many years,with a piece of mate (gourd or squash) in their skulls, overwhich the skin had been stitched together. A friend ofmine, Don Antonio de Ocampo, told me that in one of hisrambles at Ancon, on the Peruvian coast, he stumbled oversomething that proved to be a skull which protruded fromthe soil. Picking it up, he saw that a foreign substance wasinserted into the bone. It turned out to be a thin disk ofmate closing an orifice.^ The skulls we found at Kea-Kollu Chico differ from many other trephined ones in that •rralgl jsojioitj! Hioeido oilkisM Plate XXXII Metallic objects of personal decoration from Titicaea Island 1, 2. Wrist bands. 3 Gorget. 4. Breast-pendant. ANCIENT RUINS ON THE ISLAND OF TITICACA 175 the opening is circular and surrounded by a depression seems to indicate the insertion of a thinplate, as mentioned in the account given us of the operation,as well as in Senor Ocampos description of the specimenfrom Ancon. It might be objected that the skulls of Kea-Kollu are perhaps not ancient. The misshaping of skullswas rigidly prohibited by the Viceroy Don Francisco deToledo in ISTS.** Later decrees, and a stringent search foridolatrous practices in the first half of the seventeenth cen-tury, finally abolished the custom. Hence the crania fromKea-Kollu Chico must be, if not of the period before theconquest, at least quite old. Trephining is a very ancientpractice, and the artefacts that accompany skulls are,nearly all, of the type which the Indians declared to be pre-Incaic. The process of artificial deformation of skulls so gen-erally found all over the Puna and on the I
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