New research has suggested that a young Bronze Age priestess and another Bronze Age woman may not have been world travelers after all, and may not even have left Denmark, which runs contrary to previous beliefs and studies.
As Live Science reports, archaeologists are very familiar with case studies of the Egtved Girl and the Skrydstrup Woman, both of whom were discovered buried in Denmark between the years 1921 and 1935.
The most recent large-scale study of these females was conducted by Robert Frei, a professor of geology and geochemistry at the University of Copenhagen, and the conclusion which was reached was that both of these women were globetrotters, a belief which Frei and his colleagues still stand by today.
In past studies like this, scientists looked into the isotopes found in these women to ascertain where they had both spent their lives. However, new research has suggested that these past studies may not have been accurate because contamination is believed to have occurred through modern agricultural lime.
The new study's co-researcher Rasmus Andreasen, an isotope geochemist from the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus University in Denmark, explained that using isotopes to analyze ancient people can sometimes yield the wrong conclusions.
"Using strontium [isotopes] to trace prehistoric people should therefore be done with great care and a good understanding of the land use. Otherwise, you can end up with wrong conclusions."
