Braided hair may belong to the goddess in the coffin

After nearly a millennium, long braided hair found in the lead coffin at the foot of the British monastery is still intact and alive as if the hair on the head of a living person.

In October 1839, the work of the grave workers group at Romsey monastery in Hampshire, England, was interrupted when their shovel touched a hard object. It was a lead coffin with human hair inside, according to the BBC.

The hair set found at Romsey Monastery.(Photo: BBC).

Jamie Cameron, an archaeologist at Cambridge University, is trying to find a way to solve the source of the hair. The hair is shaped like it is on top but there is no skull in the coffin. According to archaeologists, the white crumbs on the hair are part of the scalp remaining. At the end of the hair, the plaited pigtail is about 20cm long.

Based on the location where the casket was found, many believed the hair dates from the Saxon or Roman times. Frank Green, archaeological advisor to Romsey monastery, made his guess about the owner of the hair."We always believe it belongs to a person of important status because at first, there were two wooden caskets outside the coffin with lead, " Green said.

For years, researchers have identified this as the hair of a saint."Most likely it is one of the two saints Morwenna, the first abbot here and Ethelflaeda, the patron of the monastery," explains Tim Sledge, pastor in Romsey.

Cameron cut a small lock of hair as a specimen and passed it to the archeology team at Oxford University. At the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Dr. Thibaut Deviese separates the dark oil residue found on the hair for several hours. The specimen is then placed into a mass spectrometry gas chromatograph (GCMS) to separate all molecules and display them on a graph.

Romsey Monastery in Hampshire, England.(Photo: Alamy).

"Based on this analysis, there is rosin on the hair of this person," Deviese said. GCMS is just one of many experiments. The most important of them is dating with carbon isotopes to find out when the owner of the hair is living.

The results show that this person almost certainly died between 895 and 1123. The experiment also revealed the diet of the hair owner with evidence of marine proteins such as fish, Cameron said. .

Researchers could not determine whether the resin found was part of a burial rite or came from hair care when the owner of the hair was alive."In fact, this person has a natural diet of marine life that can be attributed to the clergy community. Many people will assume it is St. Ethelfaeda . That may be her resting place , " Green said.

In the future, the team can find more information about the hair set through DNA analysis. Hairstyles change over the centuries, so assuming a braided hair comes from a woman can be wrong.