Regensburg and the Bavarian cemeteries, Germany
Bavarian elongated skulls
Around 500 AD (graves of the Migration Period)
In a Regensburg case, a high sloped skull comes from a cemetery the genome study also used. The bone belongs to one woman. The pattern behind that case is nine.
Why this is extraordinary
In Bavarian cemeteries of the Migration Period, the late 5th and early 6th centuries, some women were buried with heads drawn up and back. The men beside them were not, and many of the women were not either. A genome study of 36 adults from six of those cemeteries found that the pattern was not a local fashion copied onto local children. The nine clearly shaped skulls were all women, and their ancestry points mainly to southeastern Europe. The unshaped men sit with northern and central Europe. The women as a group are more mixed.
The six cemeteries are Altenerding, Alteglofsheim, Altheim, Barbing-Irlmauth, Burgweinting, and Straubing. Dates come from grave goods and from radiocarbon, a clock in once-living material. The sample was chosen to fall in about one generation, around 500 AD. One burial turned out to be two generations later. Fourteen of the 36 had been flagged as possibly shaped. Nine were clear, all women by the share of the X chromosome. Five were left as intermediate, four women and one man. Of 22 unshaped adults, 13 were women. A wider set of genomes from the project reached 41 graves, including a Roman soldier and four people from further east, two of those with shaped skulls, used as a comparison. At least one woman with a strongly shaped skull also carried East Asian ancestry, on the order of a fifth of her genome. The shaped women are not one uniform origin. Southeastern Europe is where most of them point.
The shaping itself is the older custom of boards and bands on an infant, the same family of practice known in the Carpathian Basin in the Hunnic period. A skull grows into a band. It cannot be given this outline in adulthood, so these women were shaped as children, before or as they moved, not remodelled after they arrived in Bavaria. Some of their brooches and pots have been read as eastern. Others are ordinary for the Bavarian graves. They were buried in the community cemeteries, not in a plot apart.
If the heads were a costume of rank that Bavarian families copied, the genes of shaped and unshaped women should match. They do not, in this sample, and the shape travelled with the women. Whether they were imitating a Hunnic elite, a southeastern standard of beauty, or simply carrying the look of the group they were born into, is the open part. A natural long head, from craniosynostosis or from a people born that way, would not sort so cleanly into migrant women.
Why it matters
A shaped head can be a fashion, a memory of a distant elite, or the body a child brought from somewhere else. The genes are what separate those readings. In this sample the clear shapes came with the women, from the southeast.
Artificial cranial deformation, here, means a skull shaped in infancy by boards or bands. Craniosynostosis, here, means a suture that closed too early and lengthened a head by itself. The diagram is the study’s sort, not a map. The Regensburg skulls are the kind of bone the study describes. The museum label on one of them says a Hun grave. The genomes say southeastern European ancestry, which is a neighbouring sentence, not the same one.
Photo tour
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What is still unexplained
These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.
Location and dating
- Location
- Six cemeteries in Bavaria. The skulls in the Regensburg photographs are labeled from Irlmauth and from Eltheim. Irlmauth is one of the six. The study does not publish a picture that identifies either museum skull as one of the sequenced people.
- Period label
- Current consensus — open to revision Mostly the late 5th and early 6th centuries, around 500 AD.
- How this dating was done
- Grave goods, the typology of the Migration Period, which is dating by the shape of objects, and radiocarbon on some of the burials. The genomes are not the date. They are the origin.
- What could change it
- A larger series in which shaped local women appear would reopen a Bavarian fashion. A shaped man with the same southeastern ancestry would change the “women moved” reading without touching the binding.
What is actually there
- Nine clearly shaped skulls in the Bavarian adult sample were women.
- Their collective ancestry points to southeastern Europe, with at least one East Asian component.
- Unshaped men resemble northern and central Europeans.
- The women were buried in the same cemeteries as everyone else.
- A Regensburg label calls one skull a Hun grave. The genome paper’s word is southeastern Europe.
Open questions
| Question | Status |
|---|---|
| Were the women imitating a Hunnic or southeastern elite, or wearing the ordinary look of home? | The shape came with them. The model, if there was one, was not in Bavaria. |
| Could the intermediate skulls be medical rather than bound? | Open for those five. It is not open in the same way for the nine clear women, whose ancestry moves with the shape. |
The current narrative
Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.
The current narrative — open to revision
Women who arrived already shaped
The clearly shaped heads belong to women who moved into Bavaria from southeastern Europe, carrying a childhood modification from the Hunnic-period custom. They were buried as members of the local cemeteries. The shape marks where they came from more than it marks a Bavarian fashion.
What supports this
- Nine clear cases are all women, with southeastern European ancestry.
- Unshaped men match northern and central Europe.
- The outline is made in infancy, so it predates an adult marriage or an adult journey.
- The same apparatus is already widespread in the Carpathian Basin in the 5th century.
- They share the cemeteries. The graves are not a segregated plot.
What pushes back
- Five intermediate skulls, one of them a man, keep a grey zone.
- At least one shaped woman also carried East Asian ancestry, so “southeastern Europe” is the main signal, not a single homeland.
- Some grave goods look local. Objects do not confirm the genes, and the genes do not need the objects.
- The Regensburg labels say Hun. The paper’s geographic word is broader than a people-name.
What would settle it
This holds for the nine. It is a sample of six cemeteries, not of Bavaria. A later series of shaped women with local ancestry would move it.
Emerging narratives
Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.
An emerging narrative
A look the Bavarians copied
Families in Bavaria bound their own children’s heads to imitate a prestigious foreign elite, Hunnic or otherwise. The shape is a fashion adopted on the spot.
What supports this
- The custom spreads across central Europe in these centuries, which is what copying looks like.
- Some unshaped graves also have objects read as eastern, so foreign goods and foreign heads are not locked together.
- Imitation of an elite is a human reason, and it fits the Hungarian evidence that local groups learned the technique.
What pushes back
- In this Bavarian sample the clearly shaped women are the genetic migrants.
- A local fashion should appear on daughters of local parents. That is not the pattern in the nine.
- The one male intermediate case is not a class of shaped Bavarian men.
What would settle it
Copying is a good description of the wider century. It is a weak description of these nine graves. The copying, if it is the right verb, belongs to the regions the women came from.
An emerging narrative
A natural long head
The outline is craniosynostosis, or a naturally different head, and the cultural story was fitted afterwards.
What supports this
- Early suture closure does lengthen a skull and can erase a seam.
- The study itself refused to call five skulls clear, which is room for a medical reading of the borderline cases.
What pushes back
- The clear cases are women of nonlocal ancestry. A disease would not sort that way.
- Binding is the documented infant practice of this period, with boards and bands.
- A shaped skull of the same decades, in Stuttgart, still shows a suture.
- No result used here puts the foramen magnum of these women outside a human neck.
What would settle it
Fair for a doubtful single skull. It does not explain a sex-and-ancestry pattern.
Should the current view be reevaluated?
Consensus holds well
The women, the childhood timing, and the southeastern ancestry are the best-supported reading of this sample. Imitation remains a live question about why the source communities shaped children, not about whether Bavaria invented the look. A natural cause is a poor fit for the nine and an open door for the five intermediate skulls.
What drives this
- Nine shaped skulls, and all of them women.
- Southeastern European ancestry set against local unshaped men.
- Infant timing, so the shape arrived with the person.
- Intermediate cases kept separate, including one man.
This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.
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If the contested reading is right
What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.
Bavarian families were copying a foreign look onto their own children
The genes of the next shaped women should look local. The story would move from migration to fashion, and the Hungarian evidence of a learned technique would be the nearer parallel.
Why it is still worth a test
More cemeteries, with shaped and unshaped women from the same households.
The intermediate skulls, or some of the clear ones, are medical
The cultural map would be drawn only around the skulls that show board planes and band grooves. A disease does not need a southeastern origin, so any shaped person with local ancestry would count differently.
Why it is still worth a test
A description of each intermediate skull that separates premature suture closure from pad marks.
Sources
- Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
- Artificially deformed crania from the Hun-Germanic Period in northeastern Hungary Neurosurgical Focus, 2014
Image credits
- In the Historic Museum at Regensburg, a skull labeled artificially shaped, about 500 AD, from the cemetery at Irlmauth. The forehead slopes and the vault is high.. Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
- The sort inside one study of 36 adults. Not a map, and not every grave in Bavaria. Five skulls were left in between.. Diagram: Our Deep History.
- A second skull in the same museum, labeled about 500 AD, from a grave at Eltheim that the label calls Hunnic. The vault is drawn up and back. Eltheim is not named among the six sequenced cemeteries.. Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
- Comparison: an early 6th-century woman’s skull in Stuttgart, labeled Alamannic, not from the Bavarian cemeteries. A suture line is still visible on the vault. The same decades, further west, and a seam that has not vanished.. Anagoria, CC BY 3.0. Shown unedited.