A Bronze Age woman who suffered from lower back pain 4,000 years ago and an Iron Age Pictish man who led a life of hard labor 1,500 years ago are among our ancient ancestors brought to life in dramatic facial reconstructions.
The latest technology will enable visitors to Scotland’s new Perth Museum to come face to face with four individuals from our past in present-day Perthshire.
Scientists at the University of Aberdeen analyzed human remains in the museum’s collection, using the latest advances in ancient DNA, isotope and radiocarbon analysis, as well as reconstruction forensics.
The tests revealed new and surprising findings about four very different people who lived in Perthshire over the past two millennia.
These include a 14th-century man, who was aged between 18 and 25 when he was apparently killed, and a 16th-century nun from the medieval Cistercian monastery of Elcho, who probably had a limp, as she was in ‘ broke her foot at one point. .
Each individual moves with extraordinary realism in the digital portraits, peering at the viewer as they turn their head and look around.
If they were alive today, they would not stand out in a crowd, the scientists said.
Professor Marc Oxenham, a specialist in bioarchaeology at the University of Aberdeen, told the Observer that the Bronze Age woman lived around 2200-2000 BC: “Put her in everyday clothes today and no one will bat an eye.”
He added that the Pictish man lived around 400-600 AD, but he looks just like any “ordinary young guy” today.
The Bronze Age woman’s remains were found while plowing at Lochlands farm, Perthshire, when a tractor broke into a burial chamber in 1962. She was about five feet tall and believed to be in her thirties or forties when she died. Scientific analysis reveals that she would have suffered lower back pain, while a healed trauma to her forehead indicates an accident.
Remains of the Pictish man were unearthed during construction work at Bridge of Tilt, Blair Atholl, in the 1980s. The analysis revealed that he had spent his childhood on the west coast, or possibly in Ireland, and had endured years of hard agricultural work, judging by a level of osteoarthritis that would not be expected in an individual living in his forty died. He lived mainly from farmland and he is thought to have moved to Perthshire late in life.
Radiocarbon tests on the possible murder victim, discovered in a car park at Horsecross in Perth in the early 2000s, suggest he lived around 1185-1290 AD.
He met a violent death and suffered a severe traumatic injury, crushing several ribs, before being placed in a hastily dug pit.
Oxenham said: “We don’t know exactly what that blunt force trauma was. He could have been rammed by a horse or struck in the chest with some kind of mace-like object. The way he was buried, basically thrown into a tiny pit, suggests a hasty cover-up.”
Dr Rebecca Crozier, senior lecturer in archeology at the University of Aberdeen, said the portraits make people in our past “so relatable to who we are now”, while advances in facial reconstruction have now made them all the more real. The portraits were created by Chris Rynn, a forensic and facial reconstruction expert.
The new research and stories of these ancient peoples will be on permanent display next to the Steen van die Lot in the new museum from 30 March.
