Glimpse of Bronze Age girl's daily life from hair, clothes
1. Glimpse of Bronze Age girl's daily life from hair, clothes
Karin M. Frei and Irene Skals sampling wool threads from the Bronze Age Egtved Girl's well
preserved outfit. The strontium isotope analyses of the samples reveal that her entire wool garment
was made of non-local wool.
Karin Margarita Frei, National Museum of Denmark)
One of the most significant finds of the Bronze Age, the remains of a teenage girl discovered in
Denmark, is starting to give up her secrets.
Found in a large burial mound back in 1921, she was named the Egtved girl for the town in Denmark
where she was laid to rest 3,400 years ago. Her bones had disintegrated but her clothing, fingernails
and hair were intact.
That has proved enough for scientists in Denmark to start piecing together the final few years of her
life. Using strontium isotope analysis of enamel from the girl's molar, scientists believed she most
likely hailed from southern Germany. And by doing the same analysis on her thumbnail and 23-
centimeter-long hair, they believe she was quite the frequent traveler in her final two years.
A photo of the remains of a Bronze Age high status female found inside an oak-coffin in a
monumental burial barrow at Egtved, Denmark. The Egtved Girl's garments are extremely well
2. preserved and her exceptional wool costume consists of several wool textile pieces as well as a disc-
shaped bronze belt plate, symbolizing the sun.
Roberto Fortuna, with permission of the National Museum of Denmark
"The most surprising and important thing is that our strontium isotope results show that this iconic
Bronze Age female find, who has until now been considered to be local and nearly synonymous (with
the) Danish Bronze Age, has shown to be from abroad and seems not to have spent much time in
present day Denmark at all," Karin Margarita Frei, a senior researcher at the National Museum of
Denmark and University of Copenhagen who led the analysis, told CBS News.
"Moreover, the strontium isotopic signatures in her hair and fingernail show that she moved vast
distances several hundreds of miles forth and back probably between present-day Denmark and
southern Germany," she said. "This is the first time ever that we have been able to identify such level
of high resolution mobility in a prehistoric individual."
Strontium is an element that exists in the earth's crust, and 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 in the past decade or so have
been able to determine where humans and animals lived, and where plants grew.
The researchers from National Museum of Denmark and University of Copenhagen, whose findings
were described Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, believe the cremated remains of a 6-yea-
-old girl found with the Egtved Girl also came from southern Germany. The coffin dates the burial to
a summer day in the year 1,370 BC.
3. Close up image of the Bronze Age Egtved girl's scalp hair and brain remains as well as her well
preserved costume.
Karin Margarita Frei, National Museum of Denmark
On its own, the Egtved girl's strontium isotope signature made it hard to pin down her birthplace - it
could indicate that she came from Sweden, Norway or Western or Southern Europe. She could also
have come from the island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. But when Frei combined that analysis with
that of her clothing, it was easier to pinpoint place of origin.
"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," she said. "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."
The extremely well-preserved costume of the Egtved girl consist of a short, corded wool skirt, blouse
and and a disc-shaped bronze belt plate symbolizing the sun, which researchers interpreted as
suggesting she was a priestess of a Nordic sun-worshipping cult. She was believed to have been 16
to 18 years old. It is unknown how she died.
"She was from the elite," Frei said of her place in society. "She is buried in an elite grave mound
with the oak coffin and her outfit seems to point that she was some kind of Sun priestesses."
Because Denmark and southern Germany were the "dominant centers of power" at the time,
4. according to Kristian Kristiansen, one of the co-authors, the girl was likely married in a strategic
power alliance to a chieftain in Denmark.
"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," Kristiansen said, adding that Denmark during
that time traded amber for bronze. Amber, consider equal to gold, was transported via middlemen in
Germany, to the Mediterranean.
5.
6. This is the Egtved girl's grave, from 1370 BC.
The National Museum of Denmark
"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," Kristiansen said.
By revealing details of the Egtved girl's life, Frei and her colleagues believe it could help scientists
better understand the Bronze Age. "Now we know that people could move very fast and seem to
have travelled quite a bit during their lives, so it was without a doubt a highly dynamic society," she
said.
Helle Vandkilde, an expert in the Bronze Age at Aarhus University in Denmark who was not part of
the study, said the analysis was especially helpful in offering details on the travel patterns of the
period.
"The new study and its cutting-edge methods is exciting and very novel because it reveals the
traveling biography of one single female individual belonging to the upper social rung of society in
Early Bronze Age of Southern Scandinavia," she said. "The long distances involved, the gender and
the frequency of travel are new, but should perhaps not surprise as the Bronze Age (2000-750 BCE)
represented the largest known pre-modern globalization glued together by the material of bronze."
It also shows the potential of the latest scientific techniques to give us greater insight into events
