New evidence for Bronze Age Egtved Girl’s birthplace and life

Researchers have uncovered new evidence of the birthplace and life of Bronze Age Egtved Girl, discovering she was most likely born and grew up in southern Germany, rather than Denmark.

The investigation, part-funded by the European Research Council, was carried out by the National Museum of Denmark and University of Copenhagen. The Egtved Girl is believed to have been buried on a summer’s day in 1370BC, and the researchers undertook strontium isotope analyses of the girl’s hair, teeth and nails. The result shows that she arrived in the Danish village of Egtved just before her death. Research also shows that ‘she travelled great distances the last two years of her life’.

The Egtved Girl’s wool clothing, along with the oxhide that she was laid to rest on in the oak coffin, all originate from a location outside present-day Denmark. Analysis shows that Egtved Girl, her clothing and the oxhide, in addition to a six-year-old child who was buried with her, all come from the Black Forest in southwest Germany.

Karin Margarita Frei, senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark and Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen, analysed the Egtved Girl’s strontium isotope signature and worked in collaboration with other colleagues at the university in the Danish capital, as well as the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Speaking about the movements of Egtved Girl, Frei said: “If we consider the last two years of the girl’s life, we can see that, 13 to 15 months before her death, she stayed in a place with a strontium isotope signature very similar to the one that characterises the area where she was born. Then she moved to an area that may well have been Jutland.

“After a period of ca. nine to ten months there, she went back to the region she originally came from and stayed there for four to six months before she travelled to her final resting place, Egtved. Neither her hair nor her thumbnail contained strontium isotopic signatures which indicates that she returned to Scandinavia until very shortly before she died. As an area’s strontium isotopic signature is only detectable in human hair and nails after a month, she must have come to ‘Denmark’ and ‘Egtved’ about a month before she passed away.”

The full research results can be read in the journal Scientific Reports.