‘The Dark Secrets of the Bog Bodies’, (Eamonn P. (Ned) Kelly interviewed by Diana Bentley),Minerva: The International Review of Ancient Art & Archaeology, March/April 2015, 34-37. (original) (raw)
Related papers
An Archaeological Interpretation of Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies.
In S. Ralph (ed.), The archaeology of violence: interdisciplinary approaches. The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series 2, State University of New York Press, 232–40., 2012
In 2003, the discovery in Irish peat bogs of two well-preserved Iron Age bodies provided an opportunity to undertake detailed scientific analysis with a view to understanding how, when, and why the two young male victims were killed and their bodies consigned to the bogs. Research also looked at other Iron Age objects deposited ritually in peat bogs, including other bog bodies. The locations at which the bodies were discovered were researched and a wealth of historical, folklore, and mythological material was consulted to assist interpretation of the finds. A theory was developed that appears to explain not only the ritual killings in question but also the deposition of bog bodies and other objects in peat bogs in proximity to significant territorial boundaries. The theory links the bog bodies with kingship and sovereignty rituals during the Iron Age.
Bog Bodies: Representing the Dead
2006
Introduction-Bog Bodies: introducing the phenomenon When the teeth of the digger bucket bit into the ditch vegetation at the edge of Croghan bog in County Offaly, Larry Corley noticed something solid sticking out of the cleaned drain. Jumping out of his cab, and bending down, he was shocked to find it was a human arm, ending in a huge thumb (Grice 2006: 19). He reported it immediately to the local Gardaí, and Det. Sgt. Eadaoín Campbell was sent out to photograph the remains and launch a forensic investigation, in the company of Marie Cassidy, the Irish state pathologist. To the modern eye, bogs can be desolate places: bleak landscapes, with dark pools of water, fringed with cotton grass. Both Campbell and Cassidy were aware of the disappearance of several local women from the area, over the last few years (ibid). Bogs were also a favoured place to dispose of bodies during the 1970s and 1980s period of the Troubles (Farrell 2001). Both the atmosphere of the place, and these historical disappearances, gave them to fear they were dealing with a modern murder. What they found, however, when they pulled back the black plastic over the crime scene, was the leather-coloured corpse of a much older victim, who has since become known as 'Oldcroghan man' (Grice 2006: 20). The circumstances of this discovery were not unique. In 1983, Andy Mould, working on the processing line at Lindow Moss, in Cheshire, identified the partial remains of a human skull amongst the milled peat. Again, the police were called in, since they were concerned about the disappearance of a local woman from the area-Malika Reyn-Bardt-nearly twenty years earlier (Turner 1995b: 13). They had long suspected the husband, and when they confronted him with the remains, he confessed immediately to her murder and burial in the bog at the back of their bungalow: Lindow Moss. It was only after this interview that radiocarbon analysis was conducted on the remains, which dated them to the first or second century AD: Mr Reyn-Bardt had confessed to a murder he couldn't have possibly committed. Human remains from bogs across northern Europe have been dated to periods from later prehistory up to the nineteenth century. For example, when Graubelle Man was found in Denmark, there was debate over whether the remains were those of a local peat-cutter, Red Christian, who had disappeared in the region around 1887. Apparently found of his drink, it had long been assumed he had fallen into the bog, and drowned (Glob 1969: 60). Such a fate had also befallen two Cheshire men, 'Nat Bell, and Radcliffe' who in 1853, had returned home across Lindow Moss, apparently 'loaded with ale' and had drowned in the bog before morning (Worthington-Barlow 1853: 45 cited in Turner 1995b: 10). Meanwhile, in 1758, Thomas Wormald, vicar of Hope in Derbyshire, recorded that the remains of a couple who had died crossing the
Bog Bodies from Scotland: Old Finds, New Records
Journal of Wetland Archaeology, 2011
Book Reviews edited by Anthony Harding Altes Holz in neuem Licht: archäologische und dendrochronologische Untersuchungen an spätneolithischen Feuchtbodensiedlungen in Oberschwaben by Niels Bleicher, reviewed by A. Whittle
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2020
Since the 18 th century, the peat bogs of Northern Europe have yielded the remains of hundreds of people dating from as far back as c. 8.000 BC. While the individuals with preserved soft tissue have been subjected to numerous and comprehensive studies, the less famous bog skeletons have received much less attention, even though the distinction is essentially attributable solely to differences in preservation conditions. The objective of this study is to fill this gap by providing valuable information on ten bog skeletons from the small region of Vesthimmerland in northwest Denmark. The large majority (nine out of ten) of these finds are previously unpublished. We.apply a cross-disciplinary approach consisting of osteological and paleopathological investigations combined with radiocarbon and strontium isotope analyses. Our radiocarbon results show that two of the ten bog skeletons (two adult females) date to the Nordic Neolithic Age, one 8-year old child dates to the Nordic Bronze Age, while the majority are from the Pre-Roman Iron Age and Roman Iron Age (one child, four adult females and two adult males). Anthropological examination suggested no evidence of peri-mortem violence, but the finding of gross pathologies in two individuals could hint at deliberate deposition in the bog. Nine individuals yielded strontium isotopic values suggesting a local origin, whereas a female dating to the Pre-Roman Iron Age yielded highly radiogenic signatures suggesting a non-local origin. These results represent the first cross-disciplinary study of numerous bog skeletons adding much needed information to a neglected group of individuals, shedding new light on the different theories for the deposition of human remains in bogs in prehistoric times.
Bog Bodies: Archaeological Narratives and Modern Identity
Lindow Man, the British Bog Body discovered in 1984, and the Danish examples Tollund and Grauballe Men, discovered in 1950 and 1952, represent quite literally the violent face of a confrontational past. But what exactly do the archaeological narratives say? When presented with the forensic evidence can we explicitly conclude they were murdered as human sacrifices to appease the Germanic and Celtic gods and goddesses during times of affliction? Or are they simply an example of our own imposition of modern assumptions onto the past in a flare of sensationalism and mystical dramatization of the tumultuous affairs of noble savages? How have these narratives played out in the public sphere, particularly museum and heritage, and in modern culture such as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s bog poems. Do they reinforce harmful myths of an excessively violent past dominated by innately uncivilized natives? Who does the past really belong to and who has the authority to voice it? Many facets of b...
The extensive bog excavations and draining of swamps in the 19th and 20th centuries exposed one of the most sensational groups of finds ever discovered in Danish archaeology, the bog bodies. The reason that people were given their final resting place in the bog was not because of one single tradition or one single ritual. In the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, some were due to accidents and others to murder. Some may have been sacrificed and others may have died of natural causes and were buried in the bog.
2008
This essay is about bog bodies – the preserved remains of prehistoric humans, often interpreted as ritual killings, found in peat bogs across northwest Europe. It considers the production of knowledge about the human past as a complex, relational process implicating multiple actors and traversing the terms of any straightforward nature-culture binary. It argues that theorizations of collective memory – and in particular of its ‘collective’ aspect need to pay closer attention, both to the role of non-human agencies in the shaping of humanly intelligible artefacts and histories and to the relationship between preservation and transformation as a constitutive feature of collective memory. By way of illustration, it traces in some detail the story of one particular bog body, from death and deposition in the ground through rediscovery, excavation, archaeological analysis and subsequent public display. DOI: 10.3176/tr.2008.3.05