This is what scientists think a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon teen looked like

As It Happens6:10This is what scientists think a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon teen looked like

Archaeologist Sam Leggett says it's an incredible experience to peer into the eyes of someone who died more than 1,300 years ago.

For years, Leggett has been working to piece together what life was like for an Anglo-Saxon teenage girl found buried beneath Trumpington, England, in 2012. 

Now, she also has an idea of what the girl looked like, thanks to an image generated through forensic reconstruction.

"It's sort of strangely emotive," Leggett, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Edinburgh, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"Usually as archaeologists, we don't get the chance to look face-to-face with people we've been working with. So it is just amazing to see this young girl sort of staring back at me after years of working on her."

The image — and other items from the girl's burial — will be on display this week at an exhibit at Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, called "Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology of the Cambridge Region."

Forensics meets archaeology 

The photorealistic image shows the face of a young woman with white skin, greenish-blue eyes, brown hair and "quite a nice sort of spark in her eye," Leggett said. 

Forensic artist Hew Morrison created the likeness using the same technique used to reconstruct faces for criminal investigations. 

He used measurements and photographs of the girl's skull, then digitally added on muscles and skin based on broader tissue depth data for Caucasian females. 

Without DNA analysis, he had to take a guess at her hair and eye colour, opting to give her a brunette mop and light blue irises.

"It was interesting to see her face developing," Morrison said in a University of Cambridge press release. "Her left eye was slightly lower, about half a centimetre, than her right eye. This would have been quite noticeable in life."

Howard Williams, an archaeologist at the University of Chester who was not involved in the research, called the image "striking," and said it will help bring the girl's story to the wider public.

And that story, Leggett said, is quite fascinating.

The girl's skeleton was one of four found at a construction site in Trumpington, a village just south of Cambridge, 11 years ago. Researchers estimate she was about 16 when she died.

But unlike the other three bodies, this one was buried in a wooden bed.

These burial beds are not uncommon at archaeological sites in other parts of Europe, Leggett said, but are "so, so rare in England."

In fact, only 18 have been discovered so far — all women, and all dating to the mid- to late-seventh century.

"This is a time where England is becoming Christian," Leggett said. "This part of England at this point in time was predominantly pagan. And these women all have some sort of Christian symbolism in their graves."

The bed isn't the only sign the girl was Christian.

She was found buried with an ornate gold and garnet cross on her chest, and a pair of matching hairpins connected by a gold chain. 

"She was clearly part of the elite," Leggett said. "Not just anybody could have gold and garnets. And very few people had these beds." 

Women and girls spreading Christianity

It's not yet clear how she died, though Leggett says analysis of her bones indicates she had been sick. She's hoping DNA analysis will yield further answers. 

What they do know is that she died far from home.

Isotopic analysis of her bones and teeth by Leggett and colleagues Alice Rose and Emma Brownlee show that she moved to England from the Alps, possibly in southern Germany, when she was about seven years old.

"We know that she did have severe periods of stress and illness in her very short life, which probably led to, when she's travelled that far, ultimately not being alive for very long when she reached England," Leggett said.

So why did she travel so far at such a young age? Most likely to help spread and cement Christianity among the Cambridge elite, Leggett said.

"We've got two main working options that we're sort of floating about, but both are linked to Christianity,"  Leggett said.

"The first one is probably that she was either a political bride or a political envoy sent from that region of Germany to make strong links with the kingdom, the elite space in and around Cambridge.

"Or she was a nun, possibly an abbess or somebody else really important high up in the Christian hierarchy who was likewise sort of sent over."

Williams called the findings "truly astounding and important."

"This sheds new light on the history of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms' Christian conversion," he told CBC in an email. 

"This was much more than just a story of convert kings 'seeing the light' (or being persuaded to do so), and then wielding both the cross and the sword on the battlefield. It was also a story about the stories and deeds of girls and women and their long-distance journeys."

The exhibit at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology runs from June 21, 2023 to April 14, 2024.