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| Mystery of a 7,000-year-old woman |
‘Burial XXII’ was found along with 87
other graves at a site in Skateholm, on the southern coast. What stood out to
archaeologists was that the inhabitant of this particular grave was buried
sitting up, cross-legged, and surrounded by hundreds of animal bones and teeth.
Now the ’seated woman’ or ‘shaman’ as some call her, has been expertly
recreated for a new exhibit.
To the archaeologist who excavated her
remains, she’s Burial XXII. To the staff at the museum where she will be
displayed, she’s known as the “Seated Woman” (for now, at least, though they’re
open to other suggestions). And to the artist who reconstructed her life-size
image and imagined her piercing stare, she’s the “Shaman.”
Her real name was likely last uttered some
7,000 years ago in the fertile marshes and forests of what is now southwest
Sweden. But while that name is forgotten to history, a team led by
archaeologist and artist Oscar Nilsson was able to breathe life into
her remarkable burial with a reconstruction that will be unveiled at
Sweden’s Trelleborg Museum on November 17.
The woman was buried upright, seated
cross-legged on a bed of antlers. A belt fashioned from more than 100 animal
teeth hung from her waist and a large slate pendant from her neck. A short cape
of feathers covered her shoulders.
From her bones, archaeologists were able
to determine that she stood a bit under five feet tall and was between 30 and
40 years old when she died. DNA extracted from other individuals in the burial
ground where she was found confirmed what we know about Mesolithic peoples in
Europe—that they were dark-skinned and pale-eyed.
The advent of agriculture
Lars
Larsson recalls excavating Burial XXII at the archaeological site
of Skateholm, near Trelleborg, in the early 1980s. It was one of more than
80 ancient graves recorded at Skateholm, which ranged in dates from roughly
5,500 to 4,600 B.C. and included a variety of burial types, including people
interred in pairs or with dogs, and individual dogs buried with rich grave
offerings. Burial XXII was one of only a handful of seated interments, however, archaeologists decided to excavate the burial as a single block that would be transported to a lab for further investigation.
“That may have been the most difficult
grave we excavated at Skateholm,” says Larsson, a professor emeritus of
archaeology at Lund University.
Skateholm and other late Mesolithic burial
sites in the region along the southern Scandinavian coastline hold particular
interest to archaeologists as they reveal communities of hunter-gatherers that
continued to flourish for nearly a thousand years after Neolithic farmers
brought agriculture into mainland Europe.
It appears that geographical isolation
wasn’t the reason for the late arrival of farming in Scandinavia, says Larsson,
pointing to grave goods found at Skateholm that suggest trade contacts with
agricultural communities on the European mainland. Rather, it was a choice.
“People tend to think of hunter-gathers as
uncivilized humans,” Larsson says, “but why would they transition to
agriculture when they had a great situation with hunting and gathering and
fishing?”
A gateway between worlds
While
researchers relied on human bones and DNA to create the physical reconstruction
of the woman, Larsson is reluctant to imagine her role in society apart from
saying it was “distinctive.”
Ingela Jacobsson, director of the Trelleborg
Museum, agrees. “She had some sort of special position in society considering
everything that she was buried with, but beyond that, we cannot make any sort of
determinations.”
The artist in Oscar Nilsson, however,
zeroed in on what he thought he saw. “You can interpret the evidence in many
ways, but in my eyes, she is definitely a shaman. She's buried sitting upon the
horns. It’s very striking and she very obviously was a person of great
importance and dignity,” he says.
Nilsson’s forensic technique starts with
an exact 3D replica of the original skull, scanned, printed, and then modeled
by hand to reflect the bone structure and tissue thickness based on the
individual’s origin, sex, and estimated age at death.
For the body, he recruited an acquaintance
with a similar height and build to pose cross-legged. Nilsson and his
colleagues Eline Kumlander and Cathrine Abrahamson took plaster molds of the
body model that were later cast in silicone. The clothes and
adornments—including the belt fashioned from 130 animal teeth—were sourced
locally and crafted by Helena Gjaerum.
But what draws the most attention is the
woman’s riveting, intense expression.
“I seldom make reconstructions that have
so much character,” says Nilsson, “but she is a character. As we came to the
conclusion that she was a shaman, it was easier to create her facial
expression. She’s not moving her facial muscles much, but it feels like she is
communicating.”
“She's like a gateway between our world
and the other world,” he adds, “and that has to be recognized in her face.”
Museum director Jacobsson says that she
got goosebumps the first time she saw the reconstruction. “There was a special
look in her eyes; it was really something.”
Maria Jiborn, an educator at the
Trelleborg Museum, says she felt a strange sense of déjà vu when she looked
into the face of the Mesolithic woman. “I remember thinking, hmm, haven´t we
met before? Like she was familiar in some funny way. She probably looks like
some distant acquaintance.”
BY KRISTIN ROMEY
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