The face of a medieval wanderer: Isotopic investigation of remains in Scotland

Several crossed a politically divided Scotland, meeting their end hundreds of miles from their place of birth, according to an analysis of the bodies in the bog.

Archaeologists and the public have been fascinated by the remains of nine adults and five infants found in a Roman bath house.

They were thought to have been victims of the plague or a ship from the 14th century when they were discovered in 1975.

They were 800 years older than the 6th century when radiocarbon dating showed them.

A new bioarchaeological work led by the University of Aberdeen has brought to light more details of their lives and has revealed that several of the group traveled across Scotland to make their home.

Their investigations have changed our understanding of the mobility and connections of people across Scotland in the early medieval period, when the country was divided between the Scotti in D&l Riata to the west and the Picts in most of northern Scotland.

The researchers examined the bones and teeth of the group unearthed from a Roman bathhouse in a fort, leading to them being called the bodies in the bog.

They were able to look at the diet and origins of the adults in the group. The senior author of the study said they were surprised to discover that some of them were brought up hundreds of miles apart, despite being buried in close proximity to each other.

She said that food and water can be traced back to their input source, evidencing diet and mobility patterns.

The chemical information about where a person grew up is contained in the tooth enamel, which is formed between three and six years of age.

When we examined the remains, we found six of them to be consistent with what we would expect from people who grew up in the area, but two were very different.

The analysis of the female placing her origins on the West coast suggests that they spent their childhoods somewhere else.

The male had an isotopic signature that was more typical of the Southern Highlands or Loch Lomond area, so it is likely he came from an inland area.

One of the first insights into early medieval population mobility in Scotland was provided by the findings.

Dr. Orsolya Cz, lead author of the study, said that this is a historically elusive time period where little may be gleaned about the lives of individuals from primary literary sources. It was a politically and socially tumultuous time.

In Scotland, there is little known about individual movement patterns and life histories. Information about personal movement in early medieval Scotland and beyond can be found in bioarchaeological studies.

It is assumed that travel in this period would have been limited without roads like we have today and given the political divides of the time. It was not unusual to be buried far from where you grew up in the early medieval period, according to the analysis of the burials from Cramond.

Previous studies have suggested that those buried here were of high social status. Our new analyses show that these people were well connected and had lives that brought them across the country.

This is an important step in unraveling how these different populations of early medieval Scotland and Britain interacted.

Social tensions may still have been high despite evidence for geographical mobility. Some of the skeletons at Cramond may have met with violent ends.

A woman and a child were killed in the Roman latrine, according to the analysis of the human remains. Blows to the skulls inflicted by a blunt object would have been fatal. This evidence shows that the period in question was characterized by a high level of violence.

The new findings reinforce the importance of the site, says the City of Edinburgh Council archaeologist, co-author and lead archaeologist on the investigations.

The paper was the result of fantastic collaboration between us and our co-authors from Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities. The final results from the research show that there was archaeological evidence and a window into the movement of elite society in the 6th century.

It is helping us to support our belief that Cramond was one of Scotland's key political centers during this important period of turmoil and origins for the state of Scotland. It has helped us answer some questions about the individuals buried in the Bathhouse, but it has also raised more. We hope to continue to work together to bring more findings to publication as these have a significant impact on what is known about the history of Scotland and Northern Britain during the Dark Ages.

More information: Orsolya Czére et al, The Bodies in the 'Bog': A Multi-Isotope Investigation of Individual Life-Histories at an Unusual 6th/7th AD Century Group Burial from a Roman Latrine at Cramond, Scotland, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s12520-022-01509-2 Citation: The face of a medieval wanderer: Isotopic investigation of remains in Scotland (2022, March 28) retrieved 28 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-medieval-isotopic-scotland.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.