Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian

Forensic scientists say they have found the first real proof that English settlers in 17th century Jamestown resorted to cannibalism during the "starving time", a period over the winter of 1609 to 1610 when severe drought and food shortages wiped out more than 80 per cent of the colony.

The remains of 14-year-old "Jane" were uncovered in 2012 during a 20-year-long excavation of the doomed fort by a team headed up by William Kelso from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project at Preservation Virginia and James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg. They were found in what was once a cellar room, along with butchered horse and dog bones.


"The clear intent was to dismember the body" Douglas Owsley, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History

Kelso took the remains - part of a skull and a tibia bone - to the Smithsonian for analysis. After dental analysis revealed her age, the team looked into the unusual markings on the bones. What they found was a pretty brutal and thorough stripping of flesh from the bone, indicated by indentations and scrapes in specific places.

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For instance, whoever set about dismembering Jane wanted to get to the brain - which has been found in 17th-century recipes (at least non-human brains were) - as demonstrated by four shallow cuts across the forehead, initial attempts to hack it open. The inexperienced butcher then turned to the back of the head where other, deeper blows are visible, presumed to be made with a hatchet or cleaver. In addition, there are scrapes from a fine knife all over the side and base of the mandible (the jawbone) indicating whoever was doing the dismembering wanted every last ounce of flesh.

According to Douglas Owsley, the division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the marks on the bones appear to be tentative. It's assumed that this is because it was done by someone with no experiencing of butchering, but off course the act of taking apart your co-settler for consumption probably didn't sit too well either.


Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian

"The recovered bone fragments have unusually patterned cuts and chops that reflect tentativeness, trial and complete lack of experience in butchering animal remains," he said. "Nevertheless, the clear intent was to dismember the body, removing the brain and flesh from the face for consumption." "From my experience working with prehistoric skeletons where I've seen postmortem processing of remains, this is absolutely consistent with cannibalism we see in those types of cases."

There's no indication that the girl was killed - settlers were dying all over the place, so there was essentially no need.

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However, the speed with which the act of dismembering her took place after her death indicates historic accounts of cannibalism are in fact accurate, and that the act was perhaps all too common. "The attempt to [remove] the brain is something you would need to do very quickly because brains do not preserve well," Owsley told the BBC.


The act, is of course one of desperation. Some of the first permanent English settlers in the colonies, the Jamestown inhabitants never had an easy go of it. After setting sail in December 1606 their ship landed in Chesapeake Bay in April 1607.

After sailing up the James river for about 80km, the group reached a marshy peninsula it chose as home. It was not a great choice. The wells within the fort were located between the James River, which has high salt levels depending on the season, and a Pitch and Tar Swap. To top it off, the settlers did not put their all into cultivating the land, preferring to trade with the local Powhatan people who welcomed them at first. As conditions worsened and droughts came, the Powhatan only had enough food to feed themselves and all but ceased trading with the settlers, causing the relationship between the two to turn sour. Without their leader John Smith, who had returned to England, the settlers grew more isolated, afraid of those outside the fort walls. With no reserves, no crops and no ties with local tribes, the community turned to eating its domestic animals - cats, dogs and horses - then snakes and rats.

Four shallow chops to the skull are visible here

"If the English had tried to find a worse time to launch their settlement in the New World, they could not have done so," Dennis Blanton, director of the Centre for Archaeological Research at the College of William and Mary, told National Parks magazine in a piece on the "starving time". "The Jamestown settlement was plagued by the driest seven-year episode in 770 years." Blanton was part of a team investigating the mystery of the lost settlers by studying the growth patterns of 1,000-year-old bald cypress trees in the region. Core samples demonstrated that drought was most severe during the settlement years at Jamestown, and earlier at Roanoke Island - also known as the "Lost Colony", for the disappearance of its settlers.


In January 2013 William and Mary geologists joined with the National Geographic Society to get to the root of the cause, and are now investigating the possibility of water contamination. Piping was installed to get water samples from the three original wells and the shallow aquifer that supplied them. It turned out the water was barely drinkable, and at times toxic. "There's evidence that things were worse in Jamestown than they were in other settlements nearby," William and Mary geologist Jim Kaste said. "There was something about Jamestown that caused very high death rates." The theory is that the aquifier at Jamestown was contaminated by the James River - where water quality is affected by tide and rainfall, making it too salty to drink at times - and by the nearby Pitch and Tar swamp. The team is trying to ascertain whether the deaths of settlers coincided with the months when the wells would have been saltiest, in the summer.

As they continue to investigate the mystery of the lost settlement, which was eventually abandoned, we now have a physical reminder of the loss in a reconstruction of 14-year-old Jane. Her remains were scanned and, after facial reconstruction, Medical Modeling printed her skull in 3D and New York's StudioEIS brought it to life.

This article was originally published in 2013. It has been updated to coincide with the release of Sky's Jamestown series.