In the UK, the face of a 16-year-old girl who lived in the 7th century and was buried near Cambridge was reconstructed, according to the website of the University of Cambridge. After examining the remains, the researchers found that at an early age she moved to the island of Great Britain from Central Europe, which led to noticeable changes in her diet.
The girl's face was reconstructed from the skull. “Her left eye was located a little, about half a centimeter, lower than the right. It was quite noticeable in real life,” said medical examiner Hugh Morrison, who performed the reconstruction.
Isotopic analysis of bones and teeth showed that the girl was born in the Alps, possibly in southern Germany, and moved to England after she was seven years old. After the move, the proportion of protein in her diet dropped by a small but nonetheless significant proportion.
The image of the girl's face was first presented to the public on June 21 at an exhibition in Cambridge. The exhibition also includes artifacts from a burial discovered in 2012 in the village of Trumpington in Cambridgeshire. Among them is a rare piece of jewelry dubbed the "Trumpington Cross": a gold cross adorned with garnets. The girl was buried in an unusual way: the body, dressed in expensive clothes, was laid on a carved bed. In the entire history of excavations in the UK, only 18 such burials have been found.
Only five crosses like the Trumpington cross have been found. Thus, scientists believe that the girl buried in Cambridgeshire not only belonged to an aristocratic family, but was also among the first inhabitants of England to convert to Christianity. In the same county, the graves of two more women were found, buried in beds in the 7th century. The data of isotope analysis of all found remains also coincide.
The authors of the study note that we can talk about a whole group of upper-class girls who moved from southern Germany to England. They may have come as brides for politically conditioned marriages or as nuns with missionary functions, since the conversion of England to Christianity did not begin until the very end of the sixth century.
