Yes / Ancient human mobility at the individual level is conventionally studied by the diverse application of suitable techniques (e.g. aDNA, radiogenic strontium isotopes, as well as oxygen and lead isotopes) to either hard and/or soft tissues. However, the limited preservation of coexisting hard and soft human tissues hampers the possibilities of investigating high-resolution diachronic mobility periods in the life of a single individual. Here, we present the results of a multidisciplinary study of an exceptionally well preserved circa 3.400-year old Danish Bronze Age female find, known as the Egtved Girl. We applied biomolecular, biochemical and geochemical analyses to reconstruct her mobility and diet. We demonstrate that she originated from a place outside present day Denmark (the island of Bornholm excluded), and that she travelled back and forth over large distances during the final months of her life, while consuming a terrestrial diet with intervals of reduced protein intake. We also provide evidence that all her garments were made of non-locally produced wool. Our study advocates the huge potential of combining biomolecular and biogeochemical provenance tracer analyses to hard and soft tissues of a single ancient individual for the reconstruction of high-resolution human mobility. / The Danish National Research Foundation; The Carlsberg Foundation, L'Oreal Denmark-UNESCO; The ERC agreement no. 269442
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/7234 |
Date | 26 March 2015 |
Creators | Frei, K.M., Mannering, U., Kristiansen, K., Allentoft, M.E., Wilson, Andrew S., Skals, I., Tridico, S., Nosch, M.L., Willerslev, E., Clarke, Leon J., Frei, R. |
Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Article, Published version |
Rights | (c) 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s CC license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the CC license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, CC-BY |
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