Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, left, and Jamestown archaeologist William Kelso unveil the reconstruction from the remains of "Jane," a 17th-century teenager from Jamestown who researchers believe may have been the victim of cannibalism at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. 
 
 May 1, 2013 Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, left, and Jamestown archaeologist William Kelso unveil the reconstruction from the remains of "Jane," a 17th-century teenager from Jamestown who researchers believe may have been the victim of cannibalism at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Linda Davidson/The Washington Post 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony who may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony that may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 Researchers create a reconstruction from remains of a 14-year-old girl of the Jamestown colony that may have been a victim of cannibalism. 
 
 The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all the way to the base. 
 
 “The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution. 
 
 In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do in butchering a cow. 
 
 That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive. 
 
 That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists. 
 
 This 14-year old girl was eaten. She has been reconstructed after archaeologists found her bones in Jamestown, Virginia. Her remains show that she died during the “starving time” period and bare the telltale signs of cannibalism. (The Fold/The Washington Post) 
 
 The proof comes in the form of fragments of a skeleton of a girl, about age 14, found in a cellar full of debris in the fort on the James River that sheltered the starving colonists. The skull, lower jaw and leg bone — all that remain — have the telltale marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife. 
 
 “Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” said Owsley, who has examined thousands of skeletal remains, both archaeological and forensic. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh. But it’s very strong evidence.” 
 
 James Horn, head of research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and a historian on the colony, said the discovery “adds a significant confirmation to what was reported to have occurred at Jamestown.” Further, it’s the only physical evidence of cannibalism of Europeans in any New World colony, although, as with Jamestown, there are written accounts of the practice in others. 
 
 “I tend to be sparing in the use of words like ‘unique.’ But I think this is one of those finds that literally is,” Horn said. 
 
 About 300 people inhabited the fort in November 1609. By spring, there were only 60. The girl, most likely a maidservant but possibly the daughter of a colonist, was one of the casualties. 
 
 Her bones were unearthed last August as part of the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project begun in 1994. About 18 inches of fill remain in the cellar, so it’s possible more of her skeleton will be found. Enough of her skull exists, however, to imagine what she might have looked like, using CT scanning, computer graphics, sculpture materials and demographic data. 
 
 The bones, the reconstruction of her head and the story were presented Wednesday at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The remains will be displayed at the Archaearium, the museum at the Jamestown fort archaeological site, starting this weekend. A warning sign at the room’s entrance notes that human remains are on view. There are no depictions of bodies being butchered, cooked or consumed. 
 
 The starving time nearly ended the colony, which was riven by internal dissent, under attack by Powhatan Indians and short of food almost from its founding in 1607. A resupply fleet of nine vessels had left Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609. Aboard, including crew, were 500 people, of which perhaps three dozen were women and girls. The fleet was struck by a hurricane on July 23, 1609. One ship sank. The flagship, Sea Venture, wrecked on Bermuda. Most of the passengers and crew escaped to the island, an event that became the kernel of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Among the survivors was the colony’s incoming lieutenant governor, Thomas Gates. (The marooned fashioned two boats from the wreck’s remains and miraculously sailed into Jamestown the next May.) 
 
 The seven other ships, scattered and damaged, sailed on. Six arrived in mid-August, with the girl, whom the researchers have named “Jane,” almost certainly on one of them. The seventh ship arrived in October. 
 
 The new arrivals — about 300 people — proved to be as much a drain on the colony as a relief. 
 
 The ships’ crews hoarded provisions. The summer corn crop was enough to feed only about 50 people for a year. The colony’s military leader, Capt. John Smith, sent two groups of colonists upstream and downstream to fend for themselves. He was badly wounded in what was probably an assassination attempt and in October sailed home with the ships. By then, people were already going hungry. 
 
 The girl’s bones were found mixed with those of a horse, dogs and squirrels — testament to the extreme food sources the colonists turned to that winter. They were part of the trash collected in a fort-wide cleanup and dumped in the cellar before the arrival of the colony’s governor, Lord De La Warr, the following June. 
 
 The cause of her death isn’t known. The tentative cuts to the front of the skull and the deeper ones to the back are close together — evidence that she was dead, not squirming, when they were made. The temporal bone was pried off to reach the brain. There are dozens of cuts to the jaw, suggesting that muscle was stripped from it. 
 
 Could the marks have been left by animals? 
 
 “Not a chance,” Owsley said. “I deal with this all the time. Not a chance.” In fact, he says with confidence that the dissector or dissectors were right-handed. 
 
 Chemical analysis of the bone reveals an enriched “nitrogen profile,” evidence of lots of protein in the girl’s diet. That, in turn, suggests she was a member of a high-born family or at least lived in such a household for much of her life. 
 
 She wouldn’t have gone to Jamestown alone. Whoever accompanied her was probably dead by the time she became food for the starving. “If she’d had a family to protect her — after death as well as before — this probably wouldn’t have happened,” Horn said. 
 
 Learning who she was will be difficult. Complete passenger lists for the voyages don’t exist. Research into the Virginia Company’s sponsors in Plymouth might reveal a family with a girl born in 1595 or 1596 who went to America. There may be extractable DNA in the bone fragments, but at this point, there are no descendants to compare it with. 
 
 Even the appearance that Owsley and his collaborator, Kari Bruwelheide, gave the girl is to some extent guesswork. 
 
 They used the thickness of facial tissue seen among girls in contemporary southern England to gauge Jane’s. They gave her consensus hair — light brown — not the red or blond of other latitudes and regions. They also chose not to depict her as she undoubtedly was before death — gaunt and emaciated. 
 
 “But I didn’t make her look like a healthy, plump teenager either,” Owsley said. “I’m putting her in her circumstances.” 
 
 Those include dirt on her face and a thousand-yard stare, but not, alas, her name. ||||| CLOSE Scientists say they've found archaeological evidence to support rumors they previously were skeptical of: that starving colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, turned to cannibalism to survive. (May 1) AP 
 
 Marks of butchery evident on teen's remains discovered at the site. 
 
 This August 2012 photo shows four shallow chops to an incomplete skull excavated in Jamestown, Va., by William Kelso of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. (Photo: Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian) Story Highlights During the 'starving time,' only 60 of 300 colonists survived 
 
 Researchers: Skull shows signs of cannibalization 
 
 Final blow split the cranium open 
 
 WASHINGTON -- Jamestown's colonists resorted to cannibalism during the "starving time" winter of 1609-10, archaeologists confirmed Wednesday. 
 
 In a briefing at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, archaeologist Doug Owsley presented the reconstructed skull of a 14-year-old English girl, named "Jane" by the researchers, discovered at the site of the fort and bearing the marks of butchery. 
 
 "The skull was split in half, most likely with a lightweight ax or quite possibly, a cleaver," Owsley said at the briefing. Cut marks crisscrossing the skull and jaw of the girl indicate her flesh, tongue and brains were removed from the skull, Owsley said. Those were traditional cuts for animal butchery of the time, "all parts of the cuisine of the 17th century," he said. 
 
 Jamestown was founded in 1607 by English colonists. The starving time was a period two years later in which 80% of the colonists died. Besieged by Powhatan Indians in their wooden fort, the settlers had been joined by new colonists late that summer, among them women and children, whose main supply ship had disappeared in a storm, leaving them without food. Only 60 of 300 people survived the winter. 
 
 "They were so emaciated when they were rescued that they were described as resembling skeletons," says historian James Horn of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, who spoke at the briefing. Records kept by the colony's governor, George Percy, make clear references to cannibalism during the winter, Horn says. "The English would have only resorted to cannibalism under the most severe circumstances," he added. 
 
 VIDEO: Cannibalism at Jamestown confirmed 
 
 Owsley reported on the forensic analysis of 17th century human remains and a reconstruction of her appearance made by forensic scientists. The remains had been excavated by Jamestown archaeologists led by William Kelso of the Jamestown Recovery Project in 2012 as part of a 20-year excavation of the James Fort site. "We don't believe Jane was a lone case," Kelso said. 
 
 This April 2013 photo shows a forensic facial reconstruction produced by StudioEIS of Brooklyn, N.Y., in consultation with William Kelso of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. (Photo: Don Hurlbert, Smithsonian) 
 
 "This is amazingly interesting, but it also confirms stories of cannibalism from the settlers themselves," says Charles Mann, author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. "Things were indeed terrible during those early years," Mann says, by email. 
 
 While not all colonial-era historians agreed that cannibalism took place at Jamestown, most modern ones generally credited the accounts (one man was executed for eating his wife) as reliable. Horn and Owsley argued the butchery marks on Jane provide stronger evidence for the practice. "No one can say with authoritative certainty exactly why this young lady was cut up, but given the context, it looks like butcher's marks," Owsley said. 
 
 In the briefing, he identified a number of features on the skull and a shin bone that indicated that Jane was cannibalized. Four shallow chops to the forehead were attempted in a first, failed attempt to open the skull. The back of the head was then split open. The final blow split the cranium open. 
 
 "The person doing this was not a very good, or experienced butcher," Owsley said. Chop marks on the shin bone resemble more conventional butchers' marks seen on animal bones from the time, indicating that more than one person may have been involved in cannibalizing the girl. She was doubtless one of the newly arrived settlers, though still not definitively identified. An exhibition devoted to the discovery will open this Friday at the Historic Jamestowne site, and her reconstructed face will be displayed at the Smithsonian museum. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/18cNUHU ||||| Bones In Church Ruins Likely The Remains Of Early Jamestown's Elite 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Smithsonian X 3D Smithsonian X 3D 
 
 Jamestown, Virginia — the first successful English colony in North America — was a difficult place, to say the least. Most of the colonists who arrived in 1607 died shortly thereafter. 
 
 Now archaeologists have discovered the remains of some of the colony's first leaders — Jamestown's elite. 
 
 These days, Jamestown is a historical site, where the emerald green grass rolls down to the James River and a steady breeze keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Preservation Virginia, a private nonprofit, runs the site, and Bill Kelso is the project's top archaeologist, with thick white hair and the look of someone who works outdoors in the southern sun. 
 
 toggle caption Via Wikimedia 
 
 Five years ago, Kelso hit a jackpot. "In 2010," he says, as we stroll out to the riverbank, "we found a series of gigantic postholes." The posts in those holes had been 4 feet square. They had supported a building. From the dimensions, Kelso determined it was the site of the colony's first church, built in 1608. 
 
 The church was long gone. However, he says, "We could see where there were four burials in the very east end of this rectangular pattern." Disturbed earth looks different, he says, even after centuries. 
 
 This had been an Anglican church, they knew, and the east end, where the graves were, would have been the chancel — the most holy part, as Kelso tells it. "That's where you'd have the Communion table and the altar and those kinds of things — at the end." 
 
 To be buried in the chancel, you had to be special. "The chancel is reserved for the really high-status people," says Kelso. "So we decided we were going to excavate these." 
 
 With help from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Kelso and his colleagues exhumed the remains of four men. The bones were in bad shape, and there was no way to identify who they'd been, nor any sign of how they had died. But a plaque near the church site gives some hints — a historical account of what happened at Jamestown, penned in 1607 by colonist George Percy. 
 
 Hide caption The teeth and mandibles of four male skeletons unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia, now reside in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian's museum of natural history. Researchers believe they've now puzzled out the identities of the men: high-status leaders from the first few years of the Jamestown settlement. Previous Next Meredith Rizzo/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, studies every detail of the skeletons. Previous Next Meredith Rizzo/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Only about 30 percent of each skeleton was recovered, including these pieces of one man's cranium. Previous Next Meredith Rizzo/NPR 
 
 Hide caption A team of scientists from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and Jamestown Rediscovery announced the identities Tuesday of the Rev. Robert Hunt, Capt. Gabriel Archer, Sir Ferdinando Wainman and Capt. William West. The long-dead men were leaders who helped shape the future of America during the initial phase of the Jamestown settlement in the early 1600s. Previous Next James Di Loreto/Smithsonian Institution 
 
 Hide caption Owsley says the teeth of the skeletons show signs of decay that would have been painful when the men were alive. Previous Next Meredith Rizzo/NPR 
 
 Hide caption Owsley holds thigh bones from two different skeletons. The one above has a ridge that suggests the man may have had muscular legs — perhaps from riding horses. Previous Next Meredith Rizzo/NPR 1 of 6 i View slideshow 
 
 Kelso reads from the plaque: "Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, such as swellings ... burning fevers and by wars. And some departed suddenly; but for the most part they died of mere famine." 
 
 England's Virginia Company had sent the men to America to find wealth. Most died within three years. Life was hell. The church was their spiritual refuge — and part of the colony's reason for being there, according to James Horn, the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with Preservation Virginia. 
 
 "It's not just about the commercial," he says of the colony's purpose. "It's about establishing English society in America. And English society without the Church of England at this time is unthinkable." 
 
 So who would merit burial in the chancel? 
 
 The graves, it turned out, offered some early clues. 
 
 In one, the researchers found a silk sash woven with silver sequins. In another, they found part of a staff — the sort a military officer would hold. And along with it, there was an especially intriguing object. 
 
 Merry Outlaw, a curator of collections for Jamestown Rediscovery, keeps the object — a silver box — locked up in the Jamestown "vault," as the site's collection of artifacts is known. The box is 2 inches long, an inch wide. It had been atop the coffin in one of the graves. 
 
 toggle caption Courtesy of Donald E. Hurlbert/Smithsonian Institution 
 
 Outlaw has seen thousands of artifacts from Jamestown. This one is top of the heap. 
 
 "It's a 10," she says. "It's unique; nothing else like it." That's because of what's inside the silver box, she says: a tiny lead capsule and some bone fragments (seen only via a CT scanner, after researchers decided the box was too fragile to open). 
 
 Kelso says the capsule is "a lead vessel that would hold holy water, oil or blood; and the bone would be that of a saint. Put together, this is a very holy object." There's a letter "M" scratched into the surface of the box that holds the capsule. Kelso smiles: "That stands for 'mystery,' " he says. No one knows what the "M" stands for. 
 
 But the object itself is clearly a reliquary — a container for holy relics in the Roman Catholic Church. And that is puzzling. The colonists were Anglicans — members of the Church of England. Many Anglicans at the time considered Roman Catholics their spiritual enemies. 
 
 So these were the clues in the dirt. Back at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley started work on the bones. One clue: The bones had a lot of lead in them. In those days, people sometimes ate from pewter or glazed bowls and cups, which, Owsley explains, contained lead. 
 
 People living in that community at that time would all have had some exposure to lead, Owsley says. "But if you're from a high-status family, you're going to get more." That's because metalware was more expensive than implements made from other materials. 
 
 The bones also showed high levels of nitrogen, which Owsley says indicates these men grew up with a richer diet than most. 
 
 And their arm and leg bones were not as robust as you would expect to find on laboring men — with the exception of one man, who had a thigh bone that showed signs of big muscles. In general, the men were hefty, Owsley says, "but they are not muscled-up strongly. That's characterizing their background and lifestyle." 
 
 The clues are small, Owsley says, "but we look at all these lines of evidence and tie them together." 
 
 And by combining the physical evidence with historical documents in the U.S. and England, the team finally identified the buried men: 
 
 The Rev. Robert Hunt: The first pastor to the colony, an Anglican priest, he arrived in 1607. Hunt soon lost all his possessions in a fire. The next year he died at about age 39. Capt. William West: He was a gentleman, and a relative of the colony's first governor. West died in 1610 at about age 24, fighting Indians. A silver sash was in his coffin. Sir Ferdinando Wainman: A soldier, horseman (thus the strong thighs) and an English knight, Wainman was in charge of ordnance and horses. He died in 1610, and was about 34. And, finally, Capt. Gabriel Archer: His family, in fact, was Roman Catholic and, according to records found in England, had been persecuted for failing to attend Anglican church services. It was his grave where the reliquary and the staff were found. Archer was about 34 years old when he died in 1609. 
 
 These, then, were the elite in this first and most tenuous foothold in the New World. 
 
 A closer look at the bones of Capt. Gabriel Archer 
 
 Owsley says the identifications are not airtight — he says he's about 85 percent sure. 
 
 "We surely don't have all the answers, and we certainly want this to open the discussion and lead to more research," Owsley says. He's undertaking a larger study of early settlers in the region — research on everything from tooth decay to bone shape to bone chemistry — that may help illuminate the lives, as well as the deaths, of the first English settlers in America.
– Scientists say they have the first physical evidence of a grisly truth from Jamestown: Colonists in the brutal winter of 1609 resorted to cannibalism, reports USA Today. Anthropologists studying the partial remains of a teenage girl—including her skull, jaw, and leg bone—say they bear the unmistakable marks of a cleaver and knife, reports the Washington Post. She had been, for lack of a better word, butchered. “Historians have to decide whether this type of thing happened,” says one of the Smithsonian scientists who worked on the project. “I think that it did. We didn’t see anybody eat this flesh, but it’s very strong evidence.” It's not clear whether the girl was a servant or perhaps the daughter of a colonist, or whether she was killed to be eaten or eaten after she died. Forensic scientists have re-created her face, though she will likely remain forever unidentified.