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| 0:00 | · | [Julian Richards] I went to see the British Museum's Iron Age curator, JD Hill. |
| 0:04 | · | [JD Hill] One of the odd things about this gallery is that it's full of objects from graves. |
| 0:09 | · | And when people think of a typical Iron Age burial, we often see pictures of this, |
| 0:13 | · | the Welwyn Garden City burial. - This looks pretty wealthy to me! |
| 0:16 | · | - This is an extremely wealthy burial. |
| 0:17 | · | But the bulk of Britain from 1000BC onwards, |
| 0:20 | · | we don't actually find enough dead people to represent the population. |
| 0:26 | · | The funerals in Iron Age Britain, for the bulk of the population, |
| 0:30 | · | involves not putting dead people in the ground. |
| 0:36 | · | - But this is a whole skeleton |
| 0:38 | · | and a whole skeleton buried in a pit with a load of rubbish. |
| 0:41 | · | So how do we explain that? |
| 0:43 | · | - There must be something about the way that person died, |
| 0:46 | · | or who that person was, which was special, |
| 0:50 | · | which marked them out to being |
| 0:54 | · | buried – disposed of, potentially – in a very, very different way |
| 0:59 | · | than anyone else living in that village or community. |
| 1:03 | · | Are they people who have something |
| 1:06 | · | about them in terms of their personality, |
| 1:10 | · | perhaps in terms of their physical appearance, |
| 1:13 | · | which marks them out as somehow different? |
| 1:16 | · | Are they some person who's met their death in a strange and unusual way? |
| 1:20 | · | Are they suicides? |
| 1:22 | · | Are they struck by lightning? |
| 1:27 | · | But the other possibility is that these are not people |
| 1:30 | · | who've died of natural causes |
| 1:33 | · | or of illness or of accidents, |
| 1:35 | · | but these are people who have been deliberately killed |
| 1:39 | · | by their community – sacrifices. |
| 1:50 | · | [Julian] So why was our person marked out as being special? |
| 1:53 | · | Perhaps there's a clue in the bones, |
| 1:55 | · | which have now been examined by Durham University's Charlotte Roberts. |
| 1:59 | · | [Charlotte] I think this is a woman. |
| 2:03 | · | I think... |
| 2:04 | · | Why do you say you think that it's a woman? |
| 2:05 | · | Well, we've got a skeleton here that is not fully mature. |
| 2:10 | · | And here in the pelvis, if you look at the sciatic notch, |
| 2:13 | · | it's quite wide, which you'd expect in a female, but |
| 2:16 | · | the pelvis isn't totally developed and fused, |
| 2:18 | · | so it's a bit dangerous to say it's positively female. |
| 2:22 | · | - But I thought that we were probably dealing with what, a teenager? |
| 2:25 | · | Somebody of that sort of age here? - I think she's about 16, 17. |
| 2:29 | · | - So is there anything on the skeleton that would tell us how she died? |
| 2:32 | · | Absolutely nothing. But a lot of things that would cause people's death |
| 2:36 | · | would be related just to soft tissues. |
| 2:39 | · | The only thing that I can see on the skeleton that gives an indication of her health |
| 2:45 | · | are on these ribs. |
| 2:46 | · | And what we've got here is some bone formation down here. |
| 2:53 | · | And also along here. |
| 2:54 | · | It's actual new bone that's been formed as a response to inflammation. |
| 2:58 | · | It could be pleurisy, inflammation of the pleural cavity. |
| 3:03 | · | It could be an infectious disease like tuberculosis. |
| 3:06 | · | It could be the result of pneumonia. |
| 3:08 | · | It could be the result of chronic bronchitis. |
| 3:10 | · | - And there's no way that we can tell whether or not |
| 3:13 | · | this girl was sacrificed or died a natural death? |
| 3:16 | · | No. Well, there's certainly nothing here to tell me that. |
| 3:18 | · | Right. |
| 3:20 | · | So the bones give no indication of why this girl was special. |
| 3:23 | · | But perhaps there's something about her appearance that's out of the ordinary. |
| 3:27 | · | At Manchester University, her face is going to be reconstructed by Caroline Wilkinson. |
| 3:33 | · | Well, this is the girl's skull from Bourton-on-the-Water. |
| 3:37 | · | You can see some of it's missing. |
| 3:39 | · | Part of the nasal bone is missing, but the majority of the skull is intact. |
| 3:43 | · | There is some asymmetry in the lower jaw. |
| 3:46 | · | You can see when you view it from the front |
| 3:49 | · | that the centre of her chin is heading off to her right, |
| 3:53 | · | although her teeth are in a central position. |
| 3:57 | · | The asymmetry has to be quite marked |
| 3:59 | · | on the skull for it to show up noticeably on the face. |
| 4:03 | · | All of us have asymmetrical faces. |
| 4:05 | · | Her asymmetry isn't marked enough |
| 4:08 | · | that she would be particularly unusual. |
| 4:11 | · | You can see here there's quite a lot of pegs showing above the muscle, |
| 4:15 | · | which is where the subcutaneous fat will be held in the face. |
| 4:21 | · | So this layer of clay represents |
| 4:25 | · | these buccal fat pads that fill out an adolescent face |
| 4:31 | · | and make it appear more chubby and more smooth-skinned |
| 4:34 | · | and rounded than an adult face. |
