From Popular Archaeology: an
interesting article about a grave found in Denmark that contained the remains
of a girl who lived in several widely separated northern European areas. The science
that established where she lived during her life is engaging and fascinating. And,
she and the ashes of a cremated child were placed in a wooden coffin and buried
in the grave in 1370BC, that’s right, BC. (Ed.)
***
Thu, May 21,
2015
Burial analysis shows she traveled between present-day Denmark and Southern
Germany during the Bronze Age.
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This is the Egtved Girl's grave, from 1370 BC. Courtesy the National Museum of Denmark |
University of Copenhagen—The famous Bronze Age Egtved Girl did not
originally come from Denmark, but from far away, as revealed by strontium
isotope analyses of the girl's teeth. The analyses show that she was born and
raised outside Denmark's current borders, and strontium isotope analyses of the
girl's hair and a thumb nail also show that she travelled great distances the
last two years of her life.
The wool from the Egtved Girl's clothing, the blanket she was covered
with, and the oxhide she was laid to rest on in the oak coffin all originate
from a location outside present-day Denmark. The combination of the different
provenance analyses indicates that the Egtved Girl, her clothing, and the
oxhide come from Schwarzwald ("the Black Forest") in South West
Germany - as do the cremated remains of a six-year-old child who was buried
with the Egtved Girl. The girl's coffin dates the burial to a summer day in the
year 1370 BC.
Senior researcher Karin Margarita Frei, from the National Museum of
Denmark and Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen,
analysed (sic) the Egtved Girl's strontium isotope signatures, in collaboration
with Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg and the Department
of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management and the Centre for GeoGenetics
of the University of Copenhagen.
The girl's movements mapped month
by month
Strontium is an element which exists in the earth's crust, but its
prevalence is subject to geological variation. Humans, animals, and plants
absorb strontium through water and food. By measuring the strontium isotopic
signatures in archaeological remains, researchers can determine where humans
and animals lived, and where plants grew because of their strontium isotope
signatures. In that sense, strontium serves as a kind of GPS for scientists.
"I have analysed (sic) the strontium isotopic signatures of the
enamel from one of the Egtved Girl's first molars, which was fully
formed/crystallized when she was three or four years old, and the analysis
tells us that she was born and lived her first years in a region that is
geologically older than and different from the peninsula of Jutland in
Denmark," Karin Margarita Frei says.
Karin Margarita Frei has also traced the last two years of the Egtved
Girl's life by examining the strontium isotopic signatures in the girl's
23-centimetre-long hair. The analysis shows that she had been on a long journey
shortly before she died, and this is the first time that researchers have been able
to so accurately track a prehistoric person's movements.
"If we consider the last two years of the girl's life, we can see
that, 13 to 15 months before her death, she stayed in a place with a strontium
isotope signature very similar to the one that characterizes the area where she
was born. Then she moved to an area that may well have been Jutland. After a
period of c. 9 to 10 months there, she went back to the region she originally
came from and stayed there for four to six months before she travelled to her
final resting place, Egtved. Neither her hair nor her thumb nail contains a
strontium isotopic signatures which indicates that she returned to Scandinavia
until very shortly before she died. As an area's strontium isotopic signature
is only detectable in human hair and nails after a month, she must have come to
"Denmark" and "Egtved" about a month before she passed
away," Karin Margarita Frei explains.
The Black Forest Girl
If the Egtved Girl was not born in Jutland, then where did she come from?
Karin Margarita Frei suggests that she came from South West Germany, more specifically
the Black Forest, which is located 500 miles south of Egtved.
Considered in isolation, the Egtved Girl's strontium isotope signature
could indicate that she came from Sweden, Norway or Western or Southern Europe.
She could also come from the island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. But when Karin
Margarita Frei combines the girl's strontium isotopic signatures with that of
her clothing, she can pinpoint the girl's place of origin relatively
accurately.
"The wool that her clothing was made from did not come from Denmark
and the strontium isotope values vary greatly from wool thread to wool thread.
This proves that the wool was made from sheep that either grazed in different
geographical areas or that they grazed in one vast area with very complex geology,
and Black Forest's bedrock is characterized by a similarly heterogeneous
strontium isotopic range," Karin Margarita Frei says.
That the Egtved Girl in all probability came from the Black Forest region
in Germany comes as no surprise to professor Kristian Kristiansen from the
University of Gothenburg; the archaeological finds confirm that there were
close relations between Denmark and Southern Germany in the Bronze Age.
"In Bronze Age Western Europe, Southern Germany and Denmark were the
two dominant centres (sic) of power, very similar to kingdoms. We find many
direct connections between the two in the archaeological evidence, and my guess
is that the Egtved Girl was a Southern German girl who was given in marriage to
a man in Jutland so as to forge an alliance between two powerful
families," Kristian Kristiansen says.
According to him, Denmark was rich in amber and traded amber for bronze.
In Mycenaean Greece and in the Middle East, Baltic amber was as coveted as
gold, and, through middlemen in Southern Germany, large quantities of amber
were transported to the Mediterranean, and large quantities of bronze came to
Denmark as payment. In the Bronze Age, bronze was as valuable a raw material as
oil is today so Denmark became one of the richest areas of Northern Europe.
"Amber was the engine of Bronze Age economy, and in order to keep
the trade routes going, powerful families would forge alliances by giving their
daughters in marriage to each other and letting their sons be raised by each
other as a kind of security," Kristian Kristiansen says.
A great number of Danish Bronze Age graves contain human remains that are
as well-preserved as those found the Egtved Girl's grave. Karin Margarita Frei
and Kristian Kristiansen plan to examine these remains with a view to analyzing
(sic) their strontium isotope signatures.
The research was made possible through the support of The Danish National
Research Foundation, European Research Council, the Carlsberg Foundation and
the L'Oréal Denmark-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. The results are
published in Scientific
Reports.
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Adapted and edited from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen press
release.