Archaeologists in Poland have discovered a rare iron instrument that the Celts used for skull surgery 2,300 years ago.
The hand artifact was found at Bald Mountain, a Celtic site in the Masovian region of central-eastern Poland.
“The technique and precision of the manufacture of iron objects points to Celtic metallurgy.” Bartłomiej Kaczynskian archaeologist at the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw, told Live Science in an email that it was most likely used to trepanate a human skull.
From the Greek word meaning “to bore”. trepanation is a form of cranial surgery that has been practiced in many cultures around the world, including those today Spain, Israel And Bolivia – for at least 5,000 years, until the beginning of the 19th century.
There are several methods of trepanation, but most Celts appear to have used the “traditional scraping trepanation technique,” and only a minority of Celtic settlements practiced “boring trepanation,” according to a 2007 study published in the journal. Neurosurgical Focus.
“The Celts practiced trepanation, as evidenced by individual tools found in graves,” Kaczynski said. “It appears that these operations had a medical as well as a magical purpose.”
But so far they have not found the skeletons of people who underwent the procedure on Bald Mountain.
Availability Celts — ferocious warriors who hailed from mainland Europe and sacked Rome — was somewhat surprising, the team said, since Bald Mountain is the most northeastern Celtic settlement ever found in Europe.
Kaczynski and his team have been conducting new archaeological excavations for two years at Bald Mountain, which was first excavated in the 1970s.
In 2024, archaeologists found hundreds of artifacts, including rare celtic helmet made of thin bronze sheet. And during excavations in 2025, the team found Celtic brooches, a spearhead and an iron axe, as well as numerous metal objects associated with horse riding.
The trephination tool, discovered this spring in the same part of the site as the helmet, is even rarer than the helmet because few of these surgical instruments have been found at Celtic sites, Kaczynski said. This particular tool, whose blade extends into a spike and was probably originally attached to a wooden handle, is a type of ancient scalpel.
Kaczynski told Science in Poland that the presence of an iron trepanation scalpel means that among the Celts who settled in the region there was likely someone with specialized medical or ritual knowledge, as well as a blacksmith who could create the tools found at Bald Mountain.
Excavations at Bald Mountain have shown that it was a fortified settlement even before the arrival of the Celts in the fourth century. But with the arrival of the Celts, “traces of bronze and iron metallurgy, unique imports, fragmented bronze and amber items “everything indicates that the settlement was a key center of trade,” Kaczynski said.
At that time, amber was a valuable material in the Mediterranean world, Kaczynski told Live Science in 2024and the Celts may have fortified Bald Mountain to protect their place on the Amber Road.
