By Laura Geggel about 9 hours ago

A medieval man whose face was immortalized in a striking reconstruction isn’t quite who we thought he was. The so-called Blair Atholl Man, who died at the age of 45 and was buried near Blair Atholl in the Scottish Highlands some 1,600 years ago, was not a local, researchers now say. 

Instead, Blair Atholl Man likely spent his childhood on the western coast of Scotland, perhaps on one of the islands of the western Hebrides, such as Mull, Iona or Tiree, or maybe he grew up farther away, in Ireland, a chemical analysis of his remains revealed. 

News of this man’s journeys adds to a growing line of evidence that people traveled long distances in early medieval Scotland. Research at two other archeological sites — the villages of Lundin Links and Cramond on the eastern coast of Scotland — show “that these types of movements may have not been uncommon,” study co-researcher Kate Britton, a professor of archaeological science and head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, told Live Science in an email. 

It wasn’t just men who were journeying to far-flung spots, either. “What is interesting is that at both those east-coast sites [Lundin Links and Cramond], our west-coasters were females, suggesting that both men and women — and perhaps for a variety of reasons — were making these journeys,” Britton said.

https://www.livescience.com/blair-atholl-man-scotland