Jamestown was the first permanent settlement by the English in the Americas, but its earliest years were hardly successful — in fact, the community almost died out at first, during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10. As settlers faced disease and drought, they also were surrounded by the hostile Powhatan peoples, which meant that leaving the Jamestown fort to search for food and supplies was nearly impossible. Only 60 of 214 inhabitants survived that winter, and among the dead of that episode was a 14-year old girl whose skull remains are shown here.
Archaeologists have dubbed her “Jane,” although they have no written records about her. Examining cuts on her skull, the shape of her mandible, and carbon isotope analysis, they determined that her childhood diet matched other English. They could tell her gender because, among other things, her mandible bones were relatively small. Horrifyingly, they also could tell that she had been eaten by her starving compatriots that brutal winter after she had died, a posthumous victim of cannibalism. You can see an artist’s rendition of what Jane might have looked like in the second slide.
Her skull had chops to the head and back of her cranium, and her cheeks had had knife cuts. The left side of her head had been cut and pried apart — all evidence of starvation-related cannibalism. The discovery and analysis of Jane’s bones happened after 2012; until that point, only written evidence from the early 1600s had indicated that some of the living had survived by consuming their deceased neighbors.
Sources: https://historicjamestowne.org/archaeology/jane/forensics/
