Gertrude
ca. 1600-1628
As archaeologists
excavated the 1628 shipwreck of the
Swedish warship Vasa, they labeled every skeleton they found with a
letter in the order they recovered them: A, B, C, etc. Then they gave
each skeleton a name with that letter to make is easier to discuss.
Using Skull G,
they reconstructed the face
of a sailor they called Gustav. Years later, when they sequenced the
DNA, they realized the bones were female, so a name change was in order.
Gertrude was probably the wife of a crewman. Like camp followers, they
were sometimes allowed to accompany their husbands to perform odd jobs
for the whole crew such as cooking, nursing, laundering and raising poultry.
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