The skull is that of a 30-year-old woman who was among the victims of an ancient massacre discovered in a remote forest canyon.

The archaeologists who unearthed the woman's remains dubbed her Stargazer, because of the striking position in which she was found.

"That one was bizarre," said Tony Largaespada, the U.S. Forest Service archaeologist who discovered the site.

"When you [dug] down, you came down on her face looking straight up out of the ground, straight at you."

Like the six other bodies found at the siteall members of a now vanished culture called the GallinaStargazer met a brutal end. Her neck had been broken, with her head snapped back so far that her skull rested between her shoulder blades.

"Her head was forced back so hard that it pushed a piece of [a] vertebra into the back of her skull," Largaespada said. "That was a pretty violent death."

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