Scientists have been able to identify, for the first time, the age at which an exceptional well preserved prehistoric individual migrated. The study is based on the remains of an elite Bronze Age female known as the “Skrydstrup Woman” who was buried inside a monumental mound in present day Denmark more than 3200 years ago. The study headed by Prof. Karin Margarita Frei from the National Museum of Denmark, presents an extensive multi-disciplinary approach involving scientists from different fields at institutions including University of Copenhagen, University of Aarhus, University of Bradford, the Museum of Southern Jutland and University of Gothenburg. The research has been supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.

The investigation used a novel combination of detailed biogeochemical and biomolecular analyses with microscopy-based observations and physical anthropological studies (including CT scanning and 3D visualizations) to compile a highly detailed month-scale migration timeline. The combination of these results with the physical anthropological investigations allow us to identify the chronological age of migration of this particular individual, an achievement not reached so far for a prehistoric individual.
The results reveal that the Skrydstrup Woman was between 13 to 14 years old when she migrated to Denmark and resided in the Danish area around Skrydstrup for the rest of her life.

From an archaeological standpoint, this one-time and one-way movement of an elite female during the possible “age of marriageability” suggests that she migrated with the aim of establishing an alliance between chiefdoms. As such, our study provides a novel approach to reconstructing high resolution chronology of individual mobility with the perspective of studying complex patterns of social and economic interaction in prehistory.
Finally, this research study is the first of its kind to advocate the combination of high resolution provenance tracer analyses of different human tissues applied to a single ancient individual with multi-physical anthropological analyses to identify the age of death.

Link:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178834