What did Cheddar Man look like and Why does it matter?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-07-07

Recent analysis of DNA extracted from the 10,000-year-old British Mesolithic skeleton known as Cheddar Man found that, like other Mesolithic Europeans, he was likely to have had dark skin. These data, alongside other analyses predicting that Cheddar Man would have had blue-green eyes and brown hair was used in a facial reconstruction made as part of a Channel 4 documentary, provocatively titled ‘The First Brit’. The strong reaction to the reconstruction on traditional and social media exposed how far understandings of nationhood and heritage amongst the public still often underpinned by implicit ideas of ancestry and common descent. The way in which the Cheddar Man result disrupted these ideas provides a stark example of how new scientific findings can subvert widely held popular understandings of the past and can suddenly imbue ancient remains with new contemporary meanings.

Tom Booth (Natural History Museum, London)

TAG Deva 2018
Session: Integrating Theory and Science in Archaeology