Find confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony
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Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony
By David Brown, May 01, 2013 03:14 PM EDT
The Washington Post
The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are
perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the
body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all
the way to the base.
“The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley,
a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working
on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do
in butchering a cow.
That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during
the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some
members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive.
That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never
in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived
through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional
acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being
exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh
(for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of
foraging colonists.
The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about
age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River
that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg
bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver
and a knife.
“Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said
Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both
archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see
anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.”
James Horn, head of research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
and a historian on the colony, said the discovery “adds a significant
confirmation to what was reported to have occurred at Jamestown.”
Further, it’s the only physical evidence of cannibalism of Europeans in
any New World colony, although, as with Jamestown, there are written
accounts of the practice in others.
“I tend to be sparing in the use of words like ‘unique.’ But I think
this is one of those finds that literally is,” Horn said.
About 300 people inhabited the fort in November 1609. By spring, there
were only 60. The girl, most likely a maidservant but possibly the
daughter of a colonist, was one of the casualties.
Her bones were unearthed last August as part of the Jamestown
Rediscovery archaeological project begun in 1994. About 18 inches of
fill remain in the cellar, so it’s possible more of her skeleton will
be found. Enough of her skull exists, however, to imagine what she
might have looked like, using CT scanning, computer graphics, sculpture
materials and demographic data.
The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented
Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural
History. The remains will be displayed at the Archaearium, the museum
at the Jamestown fort archaeological site, starting this weekend. A
warning sign at the room’s entrance notes that human remains are on
view. There are no depictions of bodies being butchered, cooked or
consumed.
The starving time nearly ended the colony, which was riven by internal
dissent, under attack by Powhatan Indians and short of food almost from
its founding in 1607. A resupply fleet of nine vessels had left
Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609. Aboard, including crew, were 500
people, of which perhaps three dozen were women and girls. The fleet
was struck by a hurricane on July 23, 1609. One ship sank. The
flagship, Sea Venture, wrecked on Bermuda. Most of the passengers and
crew escaped to the island, an event that became the kernel of William
Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Among the survivors was the colony’s
incoming lieutenant governor, Thomas Gates. (The marooned fashioned two
boats from the wreck’s remains and miraculously sailed into Jamestown
the next May.)
The seven other ships, scattered and damaged, sailed on. Six arrived in
mid-August, with the girl, whom the researchers have named “Jane,”
almost certainly on one of them. The seventh ship arrived in October.
The new arrivals — about 300 people — proved to be as much a drain on
the colony as a relief.
The ships’ crews hoarded provisions. The summer corn crop was enough to
feed only about 50 people for a year. The colony’s military leader,
Capt. John Smith, sent two groups of colonists upstream and downstream
to fend for themselves. He was badly wounded in what was probably an
assassination attempt and in October sailed home with the ships. By
then, people were already going hungry.
The girl’s bones were found mixed with those of a horse, dogs and
squirrels — testament to the extreme food sources the colonists turned
to that winter. They were part of the trash collected in a fort-wide
cleanup and dumped in the cellar before the arrival of the colony’s
governor, Lord De La Warr, the following June.
The cause of her death isn’t known. The tentative cuts to the front of
the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence
that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made. The temporal
bone was pried off to reach the brain. There are dozens of cuts to the
jaw, suggesting that muscle was stripped from it.
Could the marks have been left by animals?
“Not a chance,” Owsley said. “I deal with this all the time. Not a
chance.” In fact, he says with confidence that the dissector or
dissectors were right-handed.
Chemical analysis of the bone reveals an enriched “nitrogen profile,”
evidence of lots of protein in the girl’s diet. That, in turn, suggests
she was a member of a high-born family or at least lived in such a
household for much of her life.
She wouldn’t have gone to Jamestown alone. Whoever accompanied her was
probably dead by the time she became food for the starving. “If she’d
had a family to protect her — after death as well as before — this
probably wouldn’t have happened,” Horn said.
Learning who she was will be difficult. Complete passenger lists for
the voyages don’t exist. Research into the Virginia Company’s sponsors
in Plymouth might reveal a family with a girl born in 1595 or 1596 who
went to America. There may be extractable DNA in the bone fragments,
but at this point, there are no descendants to compare it with.
Even the appearance that Owsley and his collaborator, Kari Bruwelheide,
gave the girl is to some extent guesswork.
They used the thickness of facial tissue seen among girls in
contemporary southern England to gauge Jane’s. They gave her consensus
hair — light brown — not the red or blond of other latitudes and
regions. They also chose not to depict her as she undoubtedly was
before death — gaunt and emaciated.
“But I didn’t make her look like a healthy, plump teenager either,”
Owsley said. “I’m putting her in her circumstances.”
Those include dirt on her face and a thousand-yard stare, but not,
alas, her name.
Video [at link]
This 14-year old girl was eaten. She has been reconstructed after
archaeologists found her bones in Jamestown, Virginia. Her remains show
that she died during the “starving time” period and bare the telltale
signs of cannibalism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/skeleton-of-
teenage-girl-confirms-cannibalism-at-jamestown-colony/2013/05/01/
5af5b474-b1dc-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story_1.html
<========<< o >>========>
IndigeNews - Indigenous News Service
News about / by / for Indigenous Peoples
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indigenous-news/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wabanaki-news/
By David Brown, May 01, 2013 03:14 PM EDT
The Washington Post
The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are
perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the
body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all
the way to the base.
“The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley,
a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working
on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do
in butchering a cow.
That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during
the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some
members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive.
That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never
in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived
through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional
acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being
exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh
(for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of
foraging colonists.
The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about
age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River
that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg
bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver
and a knife.
“Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said
Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both
archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see
anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.”
James Horn, head of research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
and a historian on the colony, said the discovery “adds a significant
confirmation to what was reported to have occurred at Jamestown.”
Further, it’s the only physical evidence of cannibalism of Europeans in
any New World colony, although, as with Jamestown, there are written
accounts of the practice in others.
“I tend to be sparing in the use of words like ‘unique.’ But I think
this is one of those finds that literally is,” Horn said.
About 300 people inhabited the fort in November 1609. By spring, there
were only 60. The girl, most likely a maidservant but possibly the
daughter of a colonist, was one of the casualties.
Her bones were unearthed last August as part of the Jamestown
Rediscovery archaeological project begun in 1994. About 18 inches of
fill remain in the cellar, so it’s possible more of her skeleton will
be found. Enough of her skull exists, however, to imagine what she
might have looked like, using CT scanning, computer graphics, sculpture
materials and demographic data.
The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented
Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural
History. The remains will be displayed at the Archaearium, the museum
at the Jamestown fort archaeological site, starting this weekend. A
warning sign at the room’s entrance notes that human remains are on
view. There are no depictions of bodies being butchered, cooked or
consumed.
The starving time nearly ended the colony, which was riven by internal
dissent, under attack by Powhatan Indians and short of food almost from
its founding in 1607. A resupply fleet of nine vessels had left
Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609. Aboard, including crew, were 500
people, of which perhaps three dozen were women and girls. The fleet
was struck by a hurricane on July 23, 1609. One ship sank. The
flagship, Sea Venture, wrecked on Bermuda. Most of the passengers and
crew escaped to the island, an event that became the kernel of William
Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Among the survivors was the colony’s
incoming lieutenant governor, Thomas Gates. (The marooned fashioned two
boats from the wreck’s remains and miraculously sailed into Jamestown
the next May.)
The seven other ships, scattered and damaged, sailed on. Six arrived in
mid-August, with the girl, whom the researchers have named “Jane,”
almost certainly on one of them. The seventh ship arrived in October.
The new arrivals — about 300 people — proved to be as much a drain on
the colony as a relief.
The ships’ crews hoarded provisions. The summer corn crop was enough to
feed only about 50 people for a year. The colony’s military leader,
Capt. John Smith, sent two groups of colonists upstream and downstream
to fend for themselves. He was badly wounded in what was probably an
assassination attempt and in October sailed home with the ships. By
then, people were already going hungry.
The girl’s bones were found mixed with those of a horse, dogs and
squirrels — testament to the extreme food sources the colonists turned
to that winter. They were part of the trash collected in a fort-wide
cleanup and dumped in the cellar before the arrival of the colony’s
governor, Lord De La Warr, the following June.
The cause of her death isn’t known. The tentative cuts to the front of
the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence
that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made. The temporal
bone was pried off to reach the brain. There are dozens of cuts to the
jaw, suggesting that muscle was stripped from it.
Could the marks have been left by animals?
“Not a chance,” Owsley said. “I deal with this all the time. Not a
chance.” In fact, he says with confidence that the dissector or
dissectors were right-handed.
Chemical analysis of the bone reveals an enriched “nitrogen profile,”
evidence of lots of protein in the girl’s diet. That, in turn, suggests
she was a member of a high-born family or at least lived in such a
household for much of her life.
She wouldn’t have gone to Jamestown alone. Whoever accompanied her was
probably dead by the time she became food for the starving. “If she’d
had a family to protect her — after death as well as before — this
probably wouldn’t have happened,” Horn said.
Learning who she was will be difficult. Complete passenger lists for
the voyages don’t exist. Research into the Virginia Company’s sponsors
in Plymouth might reveal a family with a girl born in 1595 or 1596 who
went to America. There may be extractable DNA in the bone fragments,
but at this point, there are no descendants to compare it with.
Even the appearance that Owsley and his collaborator, Kari Bruwelheide,
gave the girl is to some extent guesswork.
They used the thickness of facial tissue seen among girls in
contemporary southern England to gauge Jane’s. They gave her consensus
hair — light brown — not the red or blond of other latitudes and
regions. They also chose not to depict her as she undoubtedly was
before death — gaunt and emaciated.
“But I didn’t make her look like a healthy, plump teenager either,”
Owsley said. “I’m putting her in her circumstances.”
Those include dirt on her face and a thousand-yard stare, but not,
alas, her name.
Video [at link]
This 14-year old girl was eaten. She has been reconstructed after
archaeologists found her bones in Jamestown, Virginia. Her remains show
that she died during the “starving time” period and bare the telltale
signs of cannibalism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/skeleton-of-
teenage-girl-confirms-cannibalism-at-jamestown-colony/2013/05/01/
5af5b474-b1dc-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story_1.html
<========<< o >>========>
IndigeNews - Indigenous News Service
News about / by / for Indigenous Peoples
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indigenous-news/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wabanaki-news/
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