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Tag: University of mainz

Long-lost Bones Belong to Saxon Queen Eadgyth

This is the most exciting archaeological story of 2010. Once again the University of Bristol is leading the world in research. And I am lucky enough to be going back to my favorite university today to hear this groundbreaking new evidence of Princess Edith’s legend.

Scientists will announce that bones excavated in Magdeburg Cathedral in 2008 are those of SaxonQueen Eadgyth (‘Edith of England’) who died in AD 946. Crucial scientific evidence came from teeth preserved in the upper jaw. The bones are the oldest surviving remains of an English royal burial. The original excavations (view the 2006-2009 excavation here) were carried out by a joint team of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, and Martin-Luther-Universitt Halle-Wittenberg.
Click the images to see them inlarge size

Eadgyth was the granddaughter of Alfred the Great and half-sister of Athelstan, the first acknowledged King of England. She was sent to marry Otto, King of Saxony in AD 929, and bore him at least two children before her death aged around 36.

She lived most of her married life at Magdeburg and was buried in the monastery of St Maurice. Her bones were moved on at least three occasions, before being interred in an elaborated tomb in Magdeburg Cathedral in 1510.

It was this tomb that was opened by German archaeologists in 2008, a tomb long expected to be empty…But instead it contained a lead box carrying the inscription EDIT REGINE CINERES HIC SARCOPHAGVS HABET… (the remains of Queen Eadgyth are in this sarcophagus…). (the inscription is visible in this slideshow)
When the box was opened partial skeletal remains were found, alongside textile material and organic residues. The challenge facing archaeologists was to show that the remains, which had been moved so often and could easily have been substituted with others, were indeed those of Queen Eadgyth.
Anthropological study of the bones at the University of Mainz, by Professor Kurt Alt, confirmed the remains belonged to a single female, who had died aged between 30 and 40. One of the femur heads showed evidence that the individual was a frequent horse rider. Isotope analysis of the bones suggested that she enjoyed a high protein diet, including a large quantity of fish. All these results suggested a high level of aristocraticy.
The crucial upper jaw evidence came from a technique which measures the strontium and oxygen isotopes that are mineralised in the teeth as they are formed. The value of these isotopes depends on the local environment, and its underlying geology, that is then locked into the teeth. Samples of the teeth were studied at the University of Bristols Department of Archaeology and the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Mainz. “By micro sampling, using a laser, we can reconstruct the sequence of a persons whereabouts, month by month, up to the age of 14,” says Dr Alistair Pike of Bristol University.
Eadgyth seems to have spent the first eight years of her life in southern England, but changed her domicile frequently,” adds Bristol’s Prof Mark Horton. Eadgyth must have moved around the kingdom following her father, king Edward the Elder during his reign. When her mother was divorced in 919 – Eadgyth was between nine and ten at that point – both were banished to a monastery, maybe Winchester or Wilton in Salisbury.”
This is too exciting for words – but don’t worry: I’m going armed with my camera and will be sure to catch all the action from the talk, alongside interviews with archaeologists in the know. I’ll also be tweeting live from the event so keep an eye out!
The bones will be reburied in Magdeburg Cathedral later on this year, exactly 500 years after their last interment in 1510.

First Farmers Didn’t Hunt or Gather

Mountain Hoverla

A century-old case may have been closed – DNA evidence appears to show Europe’s first farmers were not related to their hunter-gatherer forebears. Teams from the University of Mainz, Cambridge University and University College London have been comparing the genetic make-up of central and northern European hunter-gatherers with ancient farmers and even today’s central Europeans.

Their results show that hunter-gatherers share very little of their DNA with the farmers, and just 18 per cent with modern Europeans. Though relatively muted in comparison with other recent finds, the research provides the answer to a question that has mystified thinkers for over a hundred years. Humans traveled to Europe around 45,000 years ago, after which they foraged their way through the last ice age, which ended around 9,700 BC. Agriculture from the Near East then took hold from around 7,000 BC, which increased food potential 100-fold. The group’s results appear to prove once and for all that the farmers almost solely flocked from Mesopotamia, and weren’t indigenous to Europe.

So if we’re not related to the Stone Agers, and not the Near East farmers – who are we?

However, as much as the team have shaken off one doubt, another even stranger conundrum has appeared in its place. For not only are modern Europeans different from their Stone Age compatriots alone, but neither are they the sole descendents of the Near Eastern farmers who spread across the region either. As population geneticist Mark Thomas puts it, “This is really odd.” The researchers have asserted that the Carpathian Basin, which straddles nearly all central European nations, as the genesis for European agriculture. “It seems that farmers of the Linearbandkeramik culture immigrated from what is modern day Hungary around 7,500 years ago into Central Europe, initially without mixing with local hunter gatherers,” says Barbara Bramanti, the study’s first author. “This is surprising, because there were cultural contacts between the locals and the immigrants, but, it appears, no genetic exchange of women.”