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It's kind of the opposite of the modern effort to keep your baby's head, which of course is still very soft since the skull bones have not yet fused together, from laying in one place too long so the skull won't flatten in the back. A doctor will round the head of a baby after bird because sometimes it gets misshapen, then it's up to the parents to keep it that way by repositioning the baby in the crib.

In some cultures a flat spot on the back of the head is no big deal.

And in some cultures people go further and intentionally flatten the skull. This is a varient of that...the aim is to get a tall skull, so the means of doing that is as follows:

When the infant is very young and still in the cradleboard, a small pad is put on the forehead and one end of a board or slat of wood is attached to the top of the cradleboard; the other end of the slat is then laid down over the pad and is strapped in place. The light pressure maintained on the forehead as the child grows- coupled with the flat cradleboard on the back of the child, compresses the skull, making it taller.

The same thing was done by some moundbuilding prehistoric indians of the American southeast and it is quite noticeable. In the eyes of these people it was beautiful, and they also believed it improved a future warrior's long distance vision, which is possible because of what it does to the shape of the eyesockets.