Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2017 19:22:59 GMT -5
In the 1880s Scandinavian archaeologists unearthed a grave containing all the implements required for battle, including shields, an axe, a spear, a sword, and a bow with a set of heavy arrows, along with two horses, a mare and a stallion. A set of game pieces has long lead researchers to believe that this person was interested in strategy, and may have used the pieces to plan battle tactics. It was the grave of a Viking warrior and naturally was assumed to be a male. It was designated, and continues to be referred to, as Bj 581.
Physical anthropologists have long been able to identify characteristics such as sex and age from osteological analysis, and such investigations in the 1970s raised the prospect that this individual was, in fact, female. But the grave goods! Forget the physical characteristics of the skeleton itself, the occupant had to be male.
This past month the American Journal of Physical Anthropology published a short study that laid the case to rest once and for all. Hedenstierna-Jonson and her team scienced the hell out of two DNA samples taken from the skeleton, sequencing the genome, testing the mtDNA, and conducting strontium isotope analysis to not only pin down the biological sex of the skeleton, but also to identify geographic origins or “biological affinities” (the populations she most resembles- including the British Isles, the North Atlantic Islands, Scandinavia, and a dash of the Eastern Balkans) and the potential mobility of the individual in life. Taken together, these variables add to the already complex picture of a cosmopolitan Birka, the 8th-10th-century Viking town in which Bj 581 was interred.
Physical anthropologists have long been able to identify characteristics such as sex and age from osteological analysis, and such investigations in the 1970s raised the prospect that this individual was, in fact, female. But the grave goods! Forget the physical characteristics of the skeleton itself, the occupant had to be male.
This past month the American Journal of Physical Anthropology published a short study that laid the case to rest once and for all. Hedenstierna-Jonson and her team scienced the hell out of two DNA samples taken from the skeleton, sequencing the genome, testing the mtDNA, and conducting strontium isotope analysis to not only pin down the biological sex of the skeleton, but also to identify geographic origins or “biological affinities” (the populations she most resembles- including the British Isles, the North Atlantic Islands, Scandinavia, and a dash of the Eastern Balkans) and the potential mobility of the individual in life. Taken together, these variables add to the already complex picture of a cosmopolitan Birka, the 8th-10th-century Viking town in which Bj 581 was interred.
