This skull was found in 2012 in Jamestown, the first English settlement in the US. Archaeologists believe that she is a 14-year-old girl and her body served as food for a group of survivors. They also found bones in his leg She was found among bones of discarded animals and other food scraps discarded by Jamestown settlers during the winter of the “famine age” of 1609-1610. In the same warehouse were found a stranded horse and dogs, signs that they had been discarded during a desperate winter that began with 300 settlers stacked at James Fort and ended with just 60 lean survivors to welcome a ship arriving the following spring.

According to the study by forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, it was determined that the skull suffered multiple bumps and cuts with at least three different sharpened metal instruments. He concluded that these marks were made during a concerted effort to separate the soft tissue and the bone marrow.

Months of intensive scientific testing led Owsley to conclude that this treatment is clear proof of cannibalism, the first forensic cannibalism survival test in one of North America’s earliest European colonies.

Excavated skull suggests Jamestown colonists resorted to cannibalism

Remains of 14-year-old girl suggest that starving settlers had to go to extreme lengths to survive harsh winter of 1609

Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History displays the skull and facial reconstruction of ‘Jane of Jamestown’. PH๏τograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Gruesome archaeological evidence has emerged revealing how some of the first settlers of America survived a period of famine. The vicious winter of 1609, dubbed the Starving Time by historians, saw the colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, who had consumed every scrap of food in the settlement, turn to cannibalism. When help and supplies finally arrived the following spring, only 60 of the original 300 settlers were still alive. The skull of a 14-year-old girl, excavated last year from a rubbish dump at James Fort, has revealed a mᴀss of cut marks, at first tentative, then fiercely smashing the skull apart to extract the brain and other soft tissue for food.

Her skull has been reconstructed by forensic artists to reveal a delicately pretty face. Although her bones give the first solid evidence of rumoured cannibalism, she is unlikely to have been the only victim.

Her bones prove accounts from those who spoke to some survivors that corpses were eaten: one husband was executed when it was claimed that he had killed his wife and salted and stored her body.

Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, who worked with archaeologists at the site, told the BBC: “There were numerous chops and cuts: chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the skull, and also a puncture to the left side of the head that was used to essentially pry off that side. The purpose was to extract the brain.” “In 17th century recipes the brain is included in food – certainly not human, but it is very common with animal brains,” he said. “These are desperate people, and they’re very short of food.”

The first cuts were hesitant and unskilled and clearly made when the girl was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, he said. The site will mark the 406th anniversary on May 11 of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in America. A complete breakdown of relations with the initially friendly local people, who had originally helped with food supplies, was part of the cause of the winter of starvation.