Welcome to the British History Podcast, my name is Jamie, and this is the Acovanic Beaker

Barrel Project, discovering Ava with Maya Hool.

Do you remember back in mid-2016 when we had that facial reconstruction of the Bronze

Age woman from Scotland?

The whole world suddenly became obsessed with this stunningly life-like reconstruction,

and our email inbox was instantly flooded with links to all sorts of different articles

and sites talking about this woman who lived at some time around the period of Stonehenge

and was part of the beaker culture that dominated the island from that period.

This woman became known to the world as Ava, and she was named after the site for which

she was found, the Acovanic Beaker Barrel.

And a stunning amount of research has been dedicated to discovering what her life was like,

perhaps, how her young life ended, because she was only a teenager.

Well, what you don't know is that for the last month or so, we've been talking with

the people behind that particular project and arranging interviews.

And today, we're talking with Maya Hool, and it's fitting that we begin this project

with Maya because without her work, none of this would have happened.

Being an experienced archaeologist, Maya had access to numerous archives, and she had

the knowledge necessary to interpret them.

However, the thing that makes Maya such a force of nature isn't her training.

It's how she's been using it.

When she came across an archaeological finding that she wanted to know more about, she didn't

say, someone should look into this.

...