archaeologist have studied the skull of an Anglo - Saxon woman who appears to have had her face horrifically mutilated as a penalization shortly before her death . Her crime ? If historical effectual written document are anything to go by , she was either a slave who stole from her master , had committed adultery , or had break-dance the law with a “ particularly flagitious offense . ”
The gruesome skull was first discovered in the 1960s at Oakridge near the English Ithiel Town Basingstoke . Decades on , a squad of archaeologists from University College London and the University of Oxford have need a closer look at the cranium and let on that it tell the dark tale of a mutilated young woman in Anglo - Saxon England . Their subject field was reported today in the journalAntiquity .
The skull , thought to day of the month to between 776 and 899 CE , belonged to a young woman who died at around the age of 15 to 18 ground on dental and skull ontogenesis . The cranium bring out a trenchant approach pattern of impairment that powerfully suggest her nozzle and lip were purposely tailor off and she may have been scalped . The want of healing around the wounds suggests the woman died shortly after the mutilation , most likely as a solution of her injuries .
" There can be little doubt that the victim died at the metre – or soon after – the traumatic event , " the subject scan .
But the question remained , what could perchance excuse such a hideous last few moment on Earth ? Other archaeological find at Oakridge suggest this region was not a normal Anglo - Saxon burial ground and was perhaps used to bury social outcasts who were not take for suitable to be buried in the local graveyard . A stable isotope psychoanalysis – a technique that looks for the proportion of chemical substance elements incorporated into someone ’s skeleton to realise their dieting and where they spent most of their life – indicated she was most potential not from the local domain .
give the nature of the injuries and the fact that mutilations were often used in Anglo - Saxon England for punishment , the research worker started to see through historical documents to see if the injuries could be tie in to any archaic laws . A few laws they hit across appeared to be particularly relevant . King Cnut ’s ( 1016 to 1035 CE ) 2nd law computer code say people who committed an offense “ greater than theft ” should have their eyes , nose , auricle , upper lip , and scalp removed . It also notes the removal of the nose and ear in the case of a charwoman accused of adultery . Perhaps equally relevant , King Edmund ’s ( 921 to 946 CE ) third law code says thieving slaves should experience the penalization of scalping and the mutilation of the slight finger .
While it ’s not potential to nail which of these acts the person was found hangdog of , the researcher hold their study shows the former record of this punishment in England , suggesting the gruesome exercise is onetime than previously held .
