An ancient hominid dubbed Homo naledi may have lit controlled fires in the pitch-dark chambers of an underground cave system, new discoveries hint.
An ancient southern African hominid called Homo naledi, represented here by a child’s partial fossil skull, possibly used fire sometime between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago, new cave finds suggest.
Researchers have found remnants of small fireplaces and sooty wall and ceiling smudges in passages and chambers throughout South Africa’s Rising Star cave complex, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger announced in a December 1 lecture hosted by the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, D.C.
“Signs of fire use are everywhere in this cave system,” said Berger, of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
H. naledi presumably lit the blazes in the caves since remains of no other hominids have turned up there, the team says. But the researchers have yet to date the age of the fire remains. And researchers outside Berger’s group have yet to evaluate the new finds.
Such behavior has not been attributed to H. naledi before, largely because of its small brain. But it’s now clear that a brain roughly one-third the size of human brains today still enabled H. naledi to achieve control of fire, Berger contends.
Last August, Berger climbed down a narrow shaft and examined two underground chambers where H. naledi fossils had been found. He noticed stalactites and thin rock sheets that had partly grown over older ceiling surfaces. Those surfaces displayed blackened, burned areas and were also dotted by what appeared to be soot particles, Berger said.
Meanwhile, expedition codirector and Wits paleoanthropologist Keneiloe Molopyane led excavations of a nearby cave chamber. There, the researchers uncovered two small fireplaces containing charred bits of wood, and burned bones of antelopes and other animals.
Remains of a fireplace and nearby burned animal bones were then discovered in a more remote cave chamber where H. naledi fossils have been found, Berger said.
Still, the main challenge for investigators will be to date the burned wood and bones and other fire remains from the Rising Star chambers and demonstrate that the material comes from the same sediment layers as H. naledi fossils, says paleoanthropologist W. Andrew Barr of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who wasn’t involved in the work.
“That’s an absolutely critical first step before it will be possible to speculate about who may have made fires for what reason,” Barr says.
Bone, wood and charcoal from the South African site should also be examined with various techniques to determine whether darkened areas resulted from burning or mineral staining, says Harvard University archaeologist Sarah Hlubik, who wasn’t involved in the research. And a careful analysis of the layout of remains in the Rising Star chambers, she adds, will indicate whether Berger’s group discovered small fireplaces built by cave visitors, or only bones and other material that washed into the cave system.
Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network
Tin from the Mušiston mine in Central Asia’s Uzbekistan traveled more than 2,000 miles to Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo before crashing off the eastern shores of Uluburun in present-day Turkey.
More than 3,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun—in present-day Turkey— carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late Bronze Age.
Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship—tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.
The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.
But how could that be? During this period, the mining regions of Central Asia were occupied by small communities of highlander pastoralists—far from a major industrial center or empire. And the terrain between the two locations—which passes through Iran and Mesopotamia—was rugged, which would have made it extremely difficult to pass tons of heavy metal.
Frachetti and other archaeologists and historians were enlisted to help put the puzzle pieces together. Their findings unveiled a shockingly complex supply chain that involved multiple steps to get the tin from the small mining community to the Mediterranean marketplace.
“It appears these local miners had access to vast international networks and—through overland trade and other forms of connectivity—were able to pass this all-important commodity all the way to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.
“It’s quite amazing to learn that a culturally diverse, multiregional and multivector system of trade underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age.”
Adding to the mystique is the fact that the mining industry appears to have been run by small-scale local communities or free laborers who negotiated this marketplace outside of the control of kings, emperors or other political organizations, Frachetti said.
“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas,” he said.
About the research
The idea of using tin isotopes to determine where metal in archaeological artifacts originates dates to the mid-1990s, according to Wayne Powell, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Brooklyn College and a lead author on the study. However, the technologies and methods for analysis were not precise enough to provide clear answers. Only in the last few years have scientists begun using tin isotopes to directly correlate mining sites to assemblages of metal artifacts, he said.
“Over the past couple of decades, scientists have collected information about the isotopic composition of tin ore deposits around the world, their ranges and overlaps, and the natural mechanisms by which isotopic compositions were imparted to cassiterite when it formed,” Powell said. “We remain in the early stages of such study. I expect that in future years, this ore deposit database will become quite robust, like that of Pb isotopes today, and the method will be used routinely.”
Aslihan K. Yener, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and a professor emerita of archaeology at the University of Chicago, was one of the early researchers who conducted lead isotope analyses. In the 1990s, Yener was part of a research team that conducted the first lead isotope analysis of the Uluburun tin. That analysis suggested that the Uluburun tin may have come from two sources—the Kestel Mine in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains and some unspecified location in central Asia.
“But this was shrugged off since the analysis was measuring trace lead and not targeting the origin of the tin,” said Yener, who is a co-author of the present study.
Yener also was the first to discover tin in Turkey in the 1980s. At the time, she said the entire scholarly community was surprised that it existed there, right under their noses, where the earliest tin bronzes occurred.
Some 30 years later, researchers finally have a more definitive answer thanks to the advanced tin isotope analysis techniques: One-third of the tin aboard the Uluburun shipwreck was sourced from the Mušiston mine in Uzbekistan. The remaining two-thirds of the tin derived from the Kestel mine in ancient Anatolia, which is in present-day Turkey.
Findings offer glimpse into life 3,000-plus years ago
By 1500 B.C., bronze was the “high technology” of Eurasia, used for everything from weaponry to luxury items, tools and utensils. Bronze is primarily made from copper and tin. While copper is fairly common and can be found throughout Eurasia, tin is much rarer and only found in specific kinds of geological deposits, Frachetti said.
“Finding tin was a big problem for prehistoric states. And thus, the big question was how these major Bronze Age empires were fueling their vast demand for bronze given the lengths and pains to acquire tin as such a rare commodity. Researchers have tried to explain this for decades,” Frachetti said.
The Uluburun ship yielded the world’s largest Bronze Age collection of raw metals ever found—enough copper and tin to produce 11 metric tons of bronze of the highest quality. Had it not been lost to sea, that metal would have been enough to outfit a force of almost 5,000 Bronze Age soldiers with swords, “not to mention a lot of wine jugs,” Frachetti said.
“The current findings illustrate a sophisticated international trade operation that included regional operatives and socially diverse participants who produced and traded essential hard-earth commodities throughout the late Bronze Age political economy from Central Asia to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.
Unlike the mines in Uzbekistan, which were set within a network of small-scale villages and mobile pastoralists, the mines in ancient Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age were under the control of the Hittites, an imperial global power of a great threat to Ramses the Great of Egypt, Yener explained.
Uluburun excavation i. Credit: Cemal Pulak/Texas A&M University
The findings also show that life 3,000-plus years ago was not that different from what it is today.
“With the disruptions due to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, we have become aware of how we are reliant on complex supply chains to maintain our economy, military and standard of living,” Powell said. “This is true in prehistory as well. Kingdoms rose and fell, climatic conditions shifted and new peoples migrated across Eurasia, potentially disrupting or redistributing access to tin, which was essential for both weapons and agricultural tools.
“Using tin isotopes, we can look across each of these archaeologically evident disruptions in society and see connections were severed, maintained or redefined. We already have DNA analysis to show relational connections. Pottery, funerary practices, etc., illustrate the transmission and connectivity of ideas. Now with tin isotopes, we can document the connectivity of long-distance trade networks and their sustainability.”
More clues to explore
The current research findings settle decades-old debates about the origins of the metal on the Uluburun shipwreck and Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. But there are still more clues to explore. After they were mined, the metals were processed for shipping and ultimately melted into standardized shapes—known as ingots—for transporting. The distinct shapes of the ingots served as calling cards for traders to know from where they originated, Frachetti said.
Many of the ingots aboard the Uluburun ship were in the “oxhide” shape, which was previously believed to have originated in Cyprus. However, the current findings suggest the oxhide shape could have originated farther east. Frachetti said he and other researchers plan to continue studying the unique shapes of the ingots and how they were used in trade.
In addition to Frachetti, Powell and Yener, the following researchers contributed to the present study: Cemal Pulakat at Texas A&M University, H. Arthur Bankoff at Brooklyn College, Gojko Barjamovic at Harvard University, Michael Johnson at Stell Environmental Enterprises, Ryan Mathur at Juniata College, Vincent C. Pigott at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Michael Price at the Santa Fe Institute.
The 1,300-year-old necklace was found in an early medieval burial site in Northamptonshire
Archaeologists have found a “once-in-a-lifetime” gold necklace dating back to 630-670 AD and described as the richest of its type ever uncovered in Britain.
The jewellery, found near Northampton, has at least 30 pendants and beads made of Roman coins, gold, garnets, glass and semi-precious stones.
The 1,300-year-old object was spotted in a grave thought to be of a woman of high status, such as royalty. Experts hailed the discovery during the summer as internationally significant.
Archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) found the necklace during excavations ahead of a housing development in Harpole, west of Northampton.
“When the first glints of gold started to emerge from the soil we knew this was something significant,” said Levente-Bence Balazs, who led a team of five from Mola.’
However, we didn’t quite realize how special this was going to be.
“We are lucky to be able to use modern methods of analysis on the finds and surrounding burial to gain a much deeper insight into the life of this person and their final rites.”
The first glimpses of the necklace are carefully revealed by archaeologists
The necklace is made up of 30 pendants and beads made from Roman coins, gold and semi-precious stones
The rectangular pendant with a cross motif forms the centerpiece of the necklace and is the largest and most intricate element.
Made of red garnets set in gold, Mola specialists believe it was originally half of a hinged clasp before it was re-used.
The burial also contained two decorated pots and a shallow copper dish.
However, X-rays taken on blocks of soil lifted from the grave also revealed an elaborately decorated cross, featuring highly unusual depictions of human faces cast in silver. Mola conservators said the large and ornate piece suggests the woman may have been an early Christian leader.
Other findings include decorated pots, a copper dish and a decorated cross with depictions of human faces cast in silver (pictured)
Conservator Liz Barham has been one of a number of people working on the burial finds
Experts said the skeleton had fully decomposed apart from tiny fragments of tooth enamel. However, the combination of grave finds suggested it was of a very devout high-status woman such as an abbess, royalty, or perhaps both.
An artist impression shows what the grave of the high-status woman may have looked like
A handful of similar necklaces from this time have previously been discovered in other regions of England, but none are as ornate as the “Harpole treasure”, experts added.
The closest parallel is the Desborough necklace, found in Northamptonshire in 1876 and is now in the British Museum’s collections.
Simon Mortimer, RPS Archaeology Consultant, said: “This find is truly a once-in-a-lifetime discovery – the sort of thing you read about in textbooks and not something you expect to see coming out of the ground in front of you.
“It shows the fundamental value of developer-funded archaeology. Had they not funded this work this remarkable burial may never have been found.”
Early Medieval period timeline:
• 410 AD: Roman rule of Britain ends
• 5th-6th Centuries: People from modern-day Germany, southern Scandinavia, and The Netherlands settle in southern and eastern Britain
• Late 6th-7th Centuries: Christianity gradually spreads across southern and eastern Britain and starts to appear in elite burials
• 640-680 AD: The Harpole Treasure, a high-status burial, is buried in Northamptonshire
• 793 AD: A Viking raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne, off the coast of modern-day Northumberland, marks the start of Viking raids on Britain
• 899 AD: King Alfred the Great dies
• 1066 AD: William the Conqueror defeats Harold and becomes King of England, ending the Early Medieval period
Liz Mordue, the archaeological advisor for West Northamptonshire Council, said: “This is an exciting find which will shed considerable light on the significance of Northamptonshire in the Saxon period.”
The discoveries will be featured on BBC Two’s Digging for Britain in January, with Prof Alice Roberts getting an exclusive look at the objects and delving deeper into the ongoing conservation and analysis.
Over the past century, thousands of pieces of slate engraved with images of owls have been unearthed from tombs and pits across the Iberian Peninsula, in what’s now Portugal and Spain.
The artifacts date from around 5,000 years ago, and for more than a century their function has flummoxed archaeologists. Many thought they represented goddesses and primarily served a ritual purpose.
Findings from new research published Thursday, however, suggest a more prosaic function: They were toys made and used by children.
Víctor Díaz Núñez de Arenas, the study coauthor and researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid’s department of art history, said the engravings’ informal appearance made the team doubt they were exclusively ritual objects. Plus, many of them were found in homes and other archaeological sites that did not have a clearly ritual context.
To test the idea that they were instead toys, the research team examined 100 of the slate plaques, documenting which particular owl traits were featured in the engraving — feathery tufts, patterned feathers, a flat facial disk, a beak, and wings.
The researchers then compared them with 100 images of owls drawn earlier this year by children ages 4 to 13 at an elementary school in southwestern Spain. The students were asked by their teacher to sketch an owl in less than 20 minutes, with no further instructions.
The common species called little owl (Athene noctua) may have inspired some engraved slate plaques. Two fledglings are shown.
“The similarity of these plaques with the drawings made by children of our days is very remarkable,” Díaz Núñez de Arenas said via email. “One of the things that they reveal to us about the children of that time is that their vision of what an owl is (is) very similar, if not identical, to what children of today have.”
It’s impossible to know exactly how prehistoric children would have played with the owls, he said, but many of the slates have perforations that could have allowed kids to insert real feathers at the top, Díaz Núñez de Arenas said.
Drawings of owls by present-day children were similar to the owls on the plaques, researchers said.
In addition to play, engraving the owls could have helped children learn a valuable prehistoric skill.
“The engraving of these plaques provided the youngest with an activity with which to learn the handling of the different techniques of carving and engraving of the stone, essential for the realization of other objects, such as knives or points of arrow used for functional tasks of daily life. It could even be a way to detect and select the most skilled members of the community for stone carving,” he said.
Díaz Núñez de Arenas said the slate owls could have also played a ritual role, perhaps allowing children to participate in community ceremonies such as burials, offering their toys or dolls as a tribute to deceased loved ones.
This slate plaque with an engraving of an owl was part of the study.
Archaeologist Dr. Brenna Hassett, a research associate at University College London who was not involved in the study, agreed that many ancient objects described as ritual might have multiple purposes and uses. She said that not enough was known about how children played in prehistory, and that it remains a relatively understudied field.
“We have to remember that many things would have been made of perishable materials — such as string and fur and wood — so that is one of the reasons it is so rare to find something that is unmistakably a ‘toy,'” said Hassett, author of the 2022 book “Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood.”
DNA Offers Clues to Medieval Ashkenazi Jewish Communities
The archaeological excavations at the site of the mediaeval Jewish cemetery in the German city of Erfurt unearthed 47 graves; ancient DNA was recovered from the teeth of 33 individuals.
A rare look at the genetics of Ashkenazi Jews who lived in medieval Germany reveals this group had more genetic diversity 600 years ago than today, and reaffirms a recent finding that a “genetic bottleneck” in the Ashkenazi population occurred before the Middle Ages.
Religious laws usually prohibit any such research into the Jewish dead, but scientists worked with the region’s modern Jewish community to find a workaround: They studied the centuries-old DNA in detached teeth unearthed in the burials recovered from excavations in Erfurt, a town in central Germany, according to a study published Nov. 30 in the journal Cell.
Teeth do not have the same religious significance as other human remains, which means they can be scientifically studied. “The teeth have less importance,” Shai Carmi, a population geneticist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science. “The rest of a body needs to be reburied and cannot be destroyed; but based on Jewish law, the teeth do not need to be reburied — they are considered external to the body.”
So far, the workaround applies only to the German state of Thuringia, but Carmi is hopeful that the team’s solution will set a precedent for genetic studies of ancient Jewish populations elsewhere.
Religious laws usually prohibit scientific research on Jewish dead, but the researchers and the region’s modern Jewish community derived a workaround that allowed ancient DNA to be recovered from teeth.
Medieval Jewry
The Jewish cemetery at Erfurt served its medieval population from the late 11th century until 1454, when Jews were expelled from the city. Erfurt had been home to a thriving Jewish community until that time, although a brutal massacre in 1349 killed more than 100 Jews in the city, possibly because they were incorrectly accused of being responsible for the Black Death.
After the 1454 expulsion, a barn and a granary were built on the site of the Jewish cemetery. Centuries later, in 2013, archaeologists unearthed 47 Jewish graves during an archaeological excavation ahead of the site’s redevelopment into a multistory parking garage, Carmi said.
In 2021, the remains of these individuals were reburied in a 19th-century cemetery used by the local Jewish community, according to the study.
The granary built on top of the medieval Jewish cemetery was redeveloped in 2013 into a multistory car garage; the graves were unearthed by an archaeological rescue excavation before construction went ahead.
Before the reburial, the researchers obtained ancient DNA from the teeth of 33 people interred in the graves, and the study shows these individuals had very similar genetic makeups to modern Ashkenazi Jews living in Europe and the United States.
Scientists think the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews migrated in the early medieval period from what’s now Italy to the Rhineland in what’s now Germany, and that large population migrated from there to Eastern Europe, possibly in response to religious persecution by Christians after the 12th century.
About half of modern Jews identify as Ashkenazi Jews; others are descended from other populations, including Sephardic Jews from what is now Portugal and Spain.
The medieval synagogue in Erfurt still stands; it is now a museum dedicated to documenting medieval Jewish life in the city.
Erfurt was home to a thriving Jewish community until they were expelled in 1454; a barn and a granary, which stood until 2013, were built on what had been the medieval Jewish cemetery.
Genetic bottleneck
The researchers found evidence that Jews in medieval Erfurt had greater genetic diversity than modern Ashkenazi Jews, and they saw signs that a characteristic “genetic bottleneck” in Ashkenazi Jews occurred centuries earlier than previously thought, in about A.D. 1000, when the first Ashkenazi Jewish communities were established in the Rhineland.
That genetic bottleneck — the result of a drastically reduced ancestral population — has led to a higher incidence of certain genetic disorders among modern Ashkenazi Jews, such as Tay-Sachs disease and some hereditary cancers; and the new study shows those disorders were already present in this population by the early 15th century, Carmi said.
An analysis of the mitochondrial DNA — genetic material passed down through mothers — revealed that a third of the analyzed Erfurt individuals shared a specific sequence, which indicated they were descended from a single woman through their maternal line, the researchers added.
The research from the Erfurt remains reinforces the findings from a study earlier this year of medieval Jewish remains found in a well in Norwich, England, that likely contained the victims of an antisemitic attack.
“This paper really shows off how archaeogenetics and archaeology can give us new and otherwise unobtainable insight into periods covered by written histories,” Tom Booth, a bioarchaeologist at The Francis Crick Institute in London, told Live Science in an email. Booth was not involved in the latest research, but he was a co-researcher of the Norwich study.
Selina Brace, a specialist in ancient DNA at the National History Museum in London — who was the lead author of the Norwich research but wasn’t involved with the Erfurt study — added that it was “positive” that it drew the same conclusions as the Norwich study, including that the genetic bottleneck probably occurred about 1,000 years ago, when the first Ashkenazi Jewish communities were established.
Egypt’s Fayum Oasis Yields Funerary Structure and Portraits
The Egyptian archaeological mission at the Garza archaeological site in Egypt’s Fayoum city uncovered on Thursday a large funerary building/structure dating back to the Ptolemaic and Roman eras.
This is the 10th excavation season for this mission, which began excavations in 2016.
The Garza village, previously known as Philadelphia village, was established in the third century BCE as a central village within the agricultural reclamation project implemented by King Ptolemy II in the Fayoum region.
Its aim was to secure food resources for the Egyptian kingdom and it had both Greek and Egyptian inhabitants.
The floor of the funerary building consists of coloured lime mortar and is decorated with differently coloured tiles. In addition, the remains of four columns (found inside a column shed) were discovered in the vicinity of the building, said head of the Central Department of Egyptian Antiquities in Central Egypt Adel Okasha.
Basem Jihad, supervisor of the central training unit and head of the mission, added that a number of coffins in both ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek styles were also found.
He added that this is characteristic of this site, and that many previous discoveries reflect this combination of architecture and artefacts from both civilisations.
Furthermore, the new discovery displays the variety and diversity in the quality of embalming extant during the Ptolemaic and Roman dynasties.
This variety, which ranges from high-quality embalming to simple burials, indicates the standard of living of the dead, said Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Moustafa Waziri.
In addition, a number of portraits, popularly known as Fayoum portraits, were also uncovered by the mission.
Okasha asserted that these portraits are the first to be discovered since English archaeologist Flinders Petrie unearthed a group of them back in 1907.
Therefore, the recently discovered portraits are one of the most precious archaeological findings this season.
A rare terracotta statue of the goddess Isis Aphrodite was discovered in one of the wooden coffins, as well as a cache of papyrus documents.
The papyrus documents were inscribed in both Demotic and Greek script (both indicating the ancient Egyptian language), and reflect the social and religious conditions of the inhabitants, said Waziri.
Pottery Residues Reveal Changes in Central China’s Neolithic Diet
The sustainable development of agriculture has laid a solid foundation for the birth of human civilization and countries. Early agriculture has long been a focus of archaeology.
China is the only country in the world with two independent agricultural systems, that is, rice farming in the south and millet farming in the north.
Research has shown that rice farming prevailed in Jianghan Plain in the Neolithic period, and the millet from the north spread to the region no later than the Youziling Culture period (5800-5100 BP).
Nevertheless, it remains to be unveiled what other plant foods were consumed by prehistoric people and how the paleodiet of plant foods evolved.
In a recent study published in Frontiers in Plant Science, a research team led by Prof. Yang Yuzhang from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has, for the first time, applied starch grain analysis to examine pottery sherds from the Neolithic site of Qujialing, and revealed the resources and structure of plant foods consumed by prehistoric people in the research region.
The researchers detected starch grains from the species including job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), lotus roots, acorns, Chinese yam, and legumes on the Qujialing pottery vessels, apart from rice and millet that had been previously identified, indicating the obvious diversity of plant food resources in the late Neolithic period.
Notably, job’s tears and lotus roots in the archaeological work at Qujialing were first identified.
The high frequency of detecting starch grains from lotus roots showed that they had been widely consumed by Chinese ancestors, and that might be related to the local environment surrounded by water with abundant aquatic plant resources.
Based on the findings of previous work on macrofossil remains and phytoliths and by quantitative analysis of the frequency of various starch grains of different phases, the researchers confirmed that rice persistently dominated the paleodiet, and the proportion of food like acorns procured from gathering significantly decreased as agriculture developed in the Qujialing site.
Locations of Qujialing and nearby sites in the middle catchment of Yangtze River.
This study unveiled the economic characteristics and dietary change in the middle catchment of the Yangtze River Basin in Neolithic times, and shed new light on the spread of millet and other crops from the north to south.
Medieval Woman’s Life-Sized Model Created in Norway
“Tora” likely lived to be 65 years old in a medieval city in central Norway.
A life-size 3D model of a grinning old woman holding a walking stick looks like a contemporary elder on a stroll through her neighborhood. In reality, this woman lived nearly 800 years ago in Norway, and the model is a sculpted life-sized reconstruction based on her skeleton.
On Oct. 7, Ellen Grav, an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) University Museum, introduced the world to the lifelike model — named “Tora” — via Facebook. Tora’s likeness is now on display as part of an exhibitionat NTNU’s museum. (Tora’s name was selected in a public poll conducted by NRK, a Norwegian broadcast company.)
Tora was born near the end of the 1200s and lived in Trondheim, a city in central Norway. During that time, the medieval metropolis was growing rapidly and was inhabited by craftspeople and traders, according to the museum.
While there are no written records about Tora, archaeologists pieced together a story about this medieval woman’s life based on clues from her skeletal remains and where her body was exhumed.
“We know that she was buried in the churchyard near the street where the merchants lived,” Grav told Live Science in an email. “This suggests that she could have lived in a merchant’s family.”
Archaeologists suspect that the individuals who were buried in this churchyard were quite wealthy.
“Since Tora lived to be roughly 65, which is considered rather old for the period,” Grav said, “we do believe that she must have lived a somewhat good life for her time.”
A spinal deformity in Tora’s skeleton led Grav and her team to conclude that Tora likely walked hunched over. She also had no lower teeth and lived without them for a long period of time before her death. To the archaeologists, the bend in Tova’s back and her missing teeth hinted at “signs of hard work and lifelong wear on the skeleton,” Grav said.
An artist used silicone for the model’s skin and hand-painted liver stains and other spots on her body.
Grav worked with Thomas Foldberg, a Denmark-based film industry makeup artist, to make Tora as lifelike as possible. Unlike many facial reconstructions that involve using either X-rays or CT scans, Foldberg focused on Tora’s skeleton to help create a 3D model of what this medieval woman may have looked like. For Tora’s skin, Foldberg used silicone and even “hand painted liver stains and other spots” on her body, Grav said.
“Every strand of hair in the eyebrows, lashes and facial hair is attached one by one,” Grav said. “It’s truly amazing artistic work.”
For Tora’s costume, Marianne Vedeler, a textile professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Oslo in Norway, researched archeological finds from the area that dated to when Tora lived. Vedeler then tapped local dressmakers to fashion an outfit for the model.
“Nille Glæsel, an experienced dressmaker of Viking and medieval dresses [based in Norway], made Tora’s dress for us using medieval techniques,” Grav said. “She spun the yarn, weaved the fabric in and colored it with Rubia tinctorum [also known as rose madder]. Then she hand-sewed the dress after [Vedeler’s] reconstruction. She also made the shoes. We do have a lot of findings of shoes from Trondheim, so it was quite easy to know how the shoes should look.”
As for Tora’s friendly expression, “it was very important for us to give the audience a feeling of a warm meeting, to better connect [them] with the medieval human,” Grav said.
“People always tend to think the medieval ages were dark and heavy, but there was also joy and happiness, people loved each other and some even lived a long life. Tora’s life was hard, but she must have had good days as well. I hope that people learn that they looked like us, had feelings like us and that they were people like us as well.”
