Archaeologists have called her “Jane.”

She was only fourteen years old when she died at James Fort, part of the Jamestown settlement, during the winter of 1609-10. That winter has been called the “starving time” because of its particular brutality. The settlers dared not stray far from the fort, for fear of being preyed on by the Powhatans, and so they had been driven to eat rats and snakes in order to survive. Until now, the possibility that human flesh was also devoured had been just speculation. Recent excavation at the former site of Jamestown, however, confirms that during the “starving time” the fort’s inhabitants did indeed resort to cannibalism.

William Kelso, chief archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project and author of our Jamestown: The Buried Truth, led a team that discovered, in a pile of bones of slaughtered animals, the skull and leg bone of the young girl “Jane.” The marks found on Jane’s remains–marks made by manmade objects that show deliberate hacking and cutting–are consistent with findings on the bones of cannibalism victims. Using the skull, researchers were able to construct a replica of the girl’s head, seen in the photo top left.

This unnerving, but fascinating, episode in American colonial history is the subject of reports by the BBC and by U.S. News & World Report. The Jamestown Rediscovery Project has produced the video below, in which Dr. Kelso and other experts illustrate the significance of this remarkable discovery.