"See the Face of a Bronze Age Woman Who Lived" Topic

…in Scotland 4,000 Years Ago

"In the '90s, a team excavating a stone quarry in Scotland unearthed the 4,000-year-old skeletal remains of a young woman. She'd been laid to rest in a crouched position in a stone-lined grave. Archaeologists nicknamed her the Upper Largie Woman after the Upper Largie Quarry, where she was found.

Now, an artist has created a reconstruction of what she may have looked like during her lifetime in the early Bronze Age. Her remains have been carefully reburied, but the reconstructed bust is now on display at the Kilmartin Museum in Scotland. The museum reopened earlier this month after being closed for three years during a $8.4 USD million (£7 million) renovation project, per Sandra Dick of the Herald…"

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Armand

Somehow doubt her skin tone would be anywhere near a shade darker than than Caucasian. Can suppose they have facial bone structure correct.

Neat, but total conjecture.

Russ Dunaway

Not total conjecture. The bones tell a lot. But there is artistic interpretation.

I'm pretty sure DNA work on remains from that era do suggest that darker skin was most likely.
Cheers,
John

Fair skin tones arrived in Britain much later with the arrival of the beaker people. This has been confirmed by genetic analysis.

Were things miserable in the Bronze Age?

She looks like the lady who lived in the flat next door when I was on a sabbatical in Edinburgh

"Were things miserable in the Bronze Age?"

Being buried for 4000 years doesn't do a lot for most people's tempers

Thanks

Armand

"Somehow doubt her skin tone would be anywhere near a shade darker than than Caucasian"

Probably had a pretty good tan…? ;-)

Fair skin apparently only evolved after the change to a low vitamin D diet with the introduction of agriculture.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

Zephyr1 – A tan? You've clearly never been to Scotland…

Put her in jeans and a hoodie and she wouldn't look out of place walking down the street in Glasgow.

Cerdic – If the sun don't come you get your tan by standing in the Scottish rain. (After Lennon and McCartney)

Ha!…

Armand

@Brennus- The article suggests that she was one of the Beaker People.

"Archaeologists also found remnants of Beaker pottery in the woman's grave, indicating she may have been part of the Beaker culture, known for making pieces of distinctive pottery shaped like bells. This culture likely began in Central Europe before moving to present-day Britain around 2400 B.C.E. Beaker people quickly dominated, replacing the Neolithic communities and other groups living there.

"The carbon dating suggests she might be a descendant of the first Beaker newcomers," Webb tells Live Science."

Obvious, isn't it?? She was a woman from either the indigenous dark (or "darker") skinned "West European Hunter Gatherer," or equally darker-skinned "West European Farmer" culture, who was "taken" by (or if lucky, "married in to") a clan of in-coming "Beaker Culture" people. That easily explains the otherwise contradictory evidence of: a) DNA suggesting the reconstruction; b) the assemblage of pottery…