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Lindow Moss, Cheshire (UK), showing the locations of the three bog body finds. Left: topography of the pre-peat land surface; Right: extrapolated extents of wetland at the time of deposition of the Lindow II body.
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Bog bodies are among the best-known archaeological finds worldwide. Much of the work on these often extremely well-preserved human remains has focused on forensics, whereas the environmental setting of the finds has been largely overlooked. This applies to both the ‘physical’ and ‘cultural’ landscape and constitutes a significant problem since the...
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... with the earlier suggestion that the landscape was becoming wetter at the time, it is likely that the area had become increasingly inaccessible and that the deposition of the bodies required significant effort. A subsequent programme of gridded borehole excavation across the whole of Lindow Moss confirmed this interpretation, and has identified areas of peat near the location where Lindow II was discovered that may include contemporaneous and more recent deposits (Figure 3). ...
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The essay discusses the theoretical implications of ecological restoration in landscape architecture. The study presents a management plan for highly damaged peatlands in the Isle of Skye in Scotland, where the habitat is threatened by a radical forestation process. Being a natural carbon stock, damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse ga...
Citations
... Harvesting peat from peat bogs has been done for centuries, usually by hand, to obtain a reliable fuel resource to heat homes (Chapman et al. 2019). Throughout the years, peat cutters have gotten quite the scare when human body parts began to surface during their work. ...
... Throughout the years, peat cutters have gotten quite the scare when human body parts began to surface during their work. Today, the trade is mechanized, dramatically reducing the likelihood of discovering bodies in the peat bogs (Chapman et al. 2019). Cutting peat by hand significantly increases the chances of unearthing bodies, whereas machinery reduces close contact with the bodies and can easily cut through them. ...
This paper explores the bioarchaeological methods employed to investigate bog bodies, which are human remains preserved in peat bogs. The distinctive preservation conditions of bogs have facilitated the remarkable survival of soft tissues, hair, and even textiles, dating back thousands of years. Commencing with a concise historical overview of bog bodies and the associated cultural beliefs, this section elucidates how bogs foster preservation. Bioarchaeological techniques for studying of bog bodies encompass note-taking, photography, radiocarbon dating, isotopic analysis, and medical imaging. Subsequent application of these methods to the case study of Tollund Man, a renowned bog body unearthed in the 1950s, allows researchers to reconstruct Tollund Man’s dietary habits, lifestyle, and cause of death, thereby providing fresh insights into the lives of individuals during the Iron Age. The study of bog bodies grants a unique glimpse into the past, and the evolving bioarchaeological methods utilized in their analysis continue to enhance our comprehension of human history.
... Archaeological recovery has in fact shown that many of these bog bodies were carefully and deliberately positioned. They were not individuals who became lost in peatlands but were intentional internments in what may have been considered liminal places (Chapman 2015;Chapman et al. 2020). In lowland areas of Europe, bodies considered to be dangerous in some way were sometimes deposited far from settlements in remote places such as bogs and swamps (Barber 2010). ...
Peatlands have often been represented in cultural material as being dangerous and inhospitable places, partly based on post-medieval influences, but also partly based on elements of folklore which emphasise the ‘other-worldly’ and liminal nature of these environments. Using Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire, as a case study, the role of heritage, folklore and cultural media in guiding perceptions of the landscape is explored. Contemporary society is more diversified than historic situations, and our review indicates that perceptions of heritage landscapes reflect this complexity. The use of the peatland by different groups is explored, before addressing the interconnected roles of folklore and archaeology in past, present and future engagement with this landscape.
In the course of the Holocene large parts of the Northwest European mainland became overgrown with peat, only a fraction of which has survived to the present day. The diachronic relations between peatland expansion, human habitation trends and vegetation dynamics are poorly understood. Gaining detailed insights in the interrelations between these processes is essential to enhance interpretations of archaeological data on different spatial and temporal scales and to inform cultural heritage management and nature conservation and restoration. To achieve this goal it is key to develop interdisciplinary research designs in which the timing, pace and character of the relevant processes are analysed integrally. In this paper we present a study of the northern Dutch Fochteloerveen area, which is one of the largest and best preserved bog remnants of the Northwest European mainland. We integrate a recently published model on peatland initiation and lateral expansion with an inventory of extant archaeological data and new high-resolution palaeobotanical analyses (plant macro remains and pollen), which produces insights into the dynamic landscape history of this 'drowning' area in hitherto unparalleled detail. Two characteristic phases in the landscape history of the study area (the Late Mesolithic and Middle Roman period) are visualised by means of evidence-based artist impressions. The methodology and results of the study offer inspiration and important material for comparison for similar landscapes across the Northwest European mainland.
Fascination with the exceptional survival of human remains has been of fundamental significance cross‐culturally for millennia. This chapter discusses reflections on two contrasting assemblages that offer valuable insight into curation practice – The ‘National Museum of Ireland Bog Bodies Research Project’ and the ‘Wellcome Collection Mummy Project’, in combination with experimental observations of mummification and desiccation at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research. They each highlights the importance and wide‐reaching benefits of a carefully planned multi‐disciplinary approach to the examination of well‐preserved remains and highlights the importance of public interest in preserved bodies. Radiographic imaging has long been used in clinical practice, pathology, and the study of preserved human bodies. The biomolecular integrity of preserved bodies is now considered as important as the physical evidence, with the information potential of bioarchaeological evidence an important stimulus for research.
The authors set a relatively small and little-known corpus of human remains recovered from Iron Age wetland contexts in Norway in a wider theoretical framework of sacrifice and personhood. The material studied, fragmentary skeletal remains in wetland contexts, juxtaposed with the better-known bog body tradition of northern Europe, offers a base from which to query constructions and perceptions of personhood. Situating the discussion in a contextual framework and relational underpinnings of ways of being, the authors examine whether or not the assumption that personhood rests in a human body can be implicitly inferred when confronted with ancient human remains, and what this may imply for interpretations of human bodies in votive settings.
Discovering World Prehistory introduces the general field of archaeology and highlights for students the difference between obtaining data (basic archaeology) and interpreting those data into a prehistory, a coherent model of the past.
There is a growing interest for rescue and reuse of data from past studies (so‐called legacy data). Data loss is alarming, especially where natural archives are under threat, such as peat deposits. Here we develop a workflow for reuse of legacy radiocarbon dates in peatland studies, including a rigorous quality assessment that can be tailored to specific research questions and study regions. A penalty is assigned to each date based on criteria that consider taphonomic quality (i.e. sample provenance) and dating quality (i.e. sample material and method used). The weights of quality criteria may be adjusted based on the research focus, and resulting confidence levels may be used in further analyses to ensure robustness of conclusions. We apply the proposed approach to a case study of a (former) peat landscape in the Netherlands, aiming to reconstruct the timing of peat initiation spatially. Our search yielded 313 radiocarbon dates from the 1950s to 2019. Based on the quality assessment the dates—of highly diverse quality—were assigned to four confidence levels. Results indicate that peat initiation for the study area first peaked in the Late Glacial (~14,000 cal y BP), dropped during the Boreal (~9,500 cal y BP) and showed a second peak in the Subboreal (~4,500 cal y BP). We tentatively conclude that the earliest peak was mostly driven by climate (Bølling‐Allerød interstadial), whereas the second was probably the result of Holocene sea level rise and related groundwater level rise in combination with climatic conditions (hypsithermal). Our study highlights the potential of legacy data for palaeogeographic reconstructions, as it is cost‐efficient and provides access to information no longer available in the field. However, data retrieval may be challenging and reuse of data requires that basic information on location, elevation, stratigraphy, sample and laboratory analysis are documented irrespective of the original research aims.
Recent programmes of dating, forensic examination and landscape studies have dramatically increased our understanding of well-preserved bog bodies. However, other examples, often existing only as ‘paper bodies’, remain less visible within debates about interpretation, but can provide a more comprehensive picture of what bog bodies represent. This paper presents the results of an examination of all known bog bodies found across England, Wales and Scotland, arguing that a geographical approach provides very different outcomes compared with focusing on the well-preserved bodies in collections. Specifically, we highlight that firstly, previous assumptions about the predominant dates of bog bodies are incorrect, secondly that there are significant sub-regional patterns in the data, and thirdly, that the correlation between body date and the date of discovery provides a likely reason for this bias. Despite this, the evidence reinforces the exceptional pattern of violent deaths being a significant feature of Iron Age/Romano-British period bog bodies.
