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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
 Posted: 28-01-2008 08:26 Post subject: |
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First-century Lindow Man goes back to his roots
Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Monday January 28 2008
Lindow Man is to return to close to the spot where he met an appalling death almost 2,000 years ago, skull smashed in, strangled, stabbed, and finally dumped face down into the bog pool which preserved the evidence of his last terrible hours.
He has been one of the star exhibits at the British Museum since his discovery in 1984 by peat cutters at Lindow Moss in Cheshire, transfixing visitors who gaze into his leathery, contorted face and startlingly preserved hair and eyelashes. The museum is now sending him on a year-long loan to Manchester Museum.
"I am delighted people in the north-west will once again have the opportunity to meet this everyman of prehistoric Britain," said the London museum's director, Neil MacGregor.
Lindow Man, dated to the mid-first century AD, is the best-preserved ancient body found in Britain, and one of a haunting group of scores of bodies found in bogs across northern Europe which have provoked debate among archaeologists. Like many of the others found across Europe he was a healthy man in the prime of life, although he had the beginnings of osteoporosis in his spine, and intestinal parasites. The remains of his one surviving hand have neatly trimmed nails and fingertips with no sign of the wear of hard manual labour.
"The jury really is still out on these bodies," curator Jody Joy said, "whether they were aristocrats, priests, criminals, outsiders, whether they went willingly to their deaths or whether they were executed - but Lindow was a very remote place in those days, an unlikely place for an ambush or a murder.
"I think the fascination is that you can look into the face of a real man who may have used the implements and objects in the cases around him."
Lindow Man was exceptional among the bodies found in bogs for his "triple death", bludgeoned, stabbed, and garotted by the leather cord still around his neck. However, scientists now think the tightness of the leather may have been caused by swelling in the water.
"We may never know exactly how and why he died," Joy said, "but I believe science will have a great deal to tell us about how he lived."
Although the bodies are tanned to leather, they are fragile and in danger of decay and mould. Lindow Man will be on display in Manchester from April.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/28/archaeology.forensicscience |
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ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 06-07-2012 21:25 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Archaeologists dig up bog army bones in Denmark
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre86215m-us-denmark-bones-sacrifice/
By John AcherPosted 2012/07/03 at 3:52 pm EDT
COPENHAGEN, July 3, 2012 (Reuters) — Danish archaeologists said on Tuesday they had re-opened a mass grave of scores of slaughtered Iron Age warriors to find new clues about their fate and the bloody practices of Germanic tribes on the edge of the Roman Empire.
Bones of around 200 soldiers have already been found preserved in a peat bog near the village of Alken on Denmark's Jutland peninsula.
Experts started digging again on Monday, saying they expected to find more bodies dating back 2,000 years to around the time of Christ.
"I guess we will end up with a scale that is much larger than the 200 that we have at present," Aarhus University archaeologist Mads Kahler Holst told Reuters.
"We have only touched upon a very small part of what we expect to be there ... We have not seen anything like this before in Denmark, but it is quite extraordinary even in a European perspective," he added, speaking by phone from the site on damp grazing meadows near Jutland's large lake of Mossoe.
The first bones, belonging to people as young as 13, were discovered in 2009. Cuts and slashes on the skeletons showed they had died violently, said Holst. But nothing was known for sure about the identity of the killers, or their victims.
"That is one of the big mysteries ... We don't know if it is local or foreign - we would expect it to be local," Holst said.
"We think it is a sacrifice related to warfare and probably the defeated soldiers were killed and thrown into the lake," he said.
The remains are from the beginning of the Roman Iron Age, though Roman armies never reached so far north.
"It was the time when the Roman Empire had its greatest expansion to the north," Holst said. But even that push only got the Romans as far as modern day Germany, a few hundred kilometers to the south of the Danish site.
"This conflict could have been a consequence of the Roman expansion, its effect on the Germanic world," Holst said.
He said the discovery could shed new light on what happened in those centuries beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.
"It will also tell about what level of military organization existed in this northern European area," he said.
Similar discoveries of sacrificed warriors from a few hundred years earlier have been made at Celtic sites in France, Holst said.
The soggy conditions at Alken have delayed decomposition so the remains are unusually well preserved, he said.
The remains are so well preserved that experts will be able to analyze their DNA - a rare achievement in remains so old, said Ejvind Hertz, curator of archaeology at Skanderborg Museum.
Preliminary DNA tests have been carried out at a laboratory on six teeth and two femur bones. "There was not much in the femurs but there was in the teeth - teeth are good at preserving DNA," Hertz said.
The DNA of people who lived at that time would not normally differ from the DNA of today's Scandinavians. If differences are found, it could point to a foreign army from southern Europe, Hertz said.
(Reporting by John Acher; Editing by Andrew Heavens) |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 18-08-2012 13:07 Post subject: |
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More on the Alken find.
| Quote: | Macabre Finds in the Bog at Alken Enge, Denmark: Skeletal Remains of Hundreds of Warriors Unearthed
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814100302.htm
The first skull from the 2012 dig with a mortal wound caused by a spear or an arrow. (Credit: Field Director Ejvind Hertz, Skanderborg Museum)
ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2012) — A fractured skull and a thighbone hacked in half. Finds of damaged human bones along with axes, spears, clubs and shields confirm that the bog at Alken Enge was the site of violent conflict.
"It's clear that this must have been a quite far-reaching and dramatic event that must have had profound effect on the society of the time," explains Project Manager Mads Kähler Holst, professor of archaeology at Aarhus University.
For almost two months now, Dr Holst and a team of fifteen archaeologists and geologists have been working to excavate the remains of a large army that was sacrificed at the site around the time of the birth of Christ. The skeletal remains of hundreds of warriors lie buried in the Alken Enge wetlands near Lake Mossø in East Jutland, Denmark.
The remains will be exhumed from the excavation site over the coming days. Then an international team of researchers will attempt to discover who these warriors were and where they came from by performing detailed analyses of the remains.
"The dig has produced a large quantity of skeletal remains, and we believe that they will give us the answers to some of our questions about what kind of events led up to the army ending up here," explains Dr Holst.
Forty hectares of remains
The archaeological investigation of the site is nearing its conclusion for this year. But there are many indications that the find is much larger than the area archaeologists have excavated thus far.
"We've done small test digs at different places in the 40 hectare Alken Enge wetlands area, and new finds keep emerging," says Field Director Ejvind Hertz of Skanderborg Museum, who is directing the dig.
In fact, the find is so massive that researchers aren't counting on being able to excavate all of it. Instead, they will focus on recreating the general outlines of the events that took place at the site by performing smaller digs at different spots across the bog and reconstructing what the landscape might have looked like at the time of the birth of Christ.
New geological insights
At the same time as the archaeological dig, geologists from the Department of Geoscience at AU have been investigating the development of the bog.
"The geological survey indicates that the archaeological finds were deposited in a lake at a point in time when there was a a smaller basin at the east end of Lake Mossø created by a tongue of land jutting into the lake," explains Professor Bent Vad Odgaard, Aarhus University.
This smaller basin became the Alken Enge bog of today. The geologists' analyses also indicate that the water level in the area has changed several times. Mapping these periods of high and low water levels chronologically using geological techniques will tell researchers what the precise conditions were on the site at the time of the mass sacrifice.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Aarhus University. The original article was written by Signe Hvid Maribo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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| Daftbugger1 Thumb twiddler Joined: 09 Oct 2001 Total posts: 264 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 19-08-2012 22:27 Post subject: |
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| My great uncle was Professor Glob's assistant, and got a lot of TV time after the Professors death. Now probably more famous for that, than discovering Dilmun. I remember being made to watch the Timewatch programme about the bog bodies when I was little, and the gorotting scared me half to death! |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5719 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 19-08-2012 22:40 Post subject: |
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Thats an interesting family connection.
I loved `The Bog People` too. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 11-12-2012 23:13 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Museum to examine remains found in Co Meath bog
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1210/1224327682934.html
MARK HILLIARD
Mon, Dec 10, 2012
The National Museum of Ireland is to begin examining the remains of Ireland's latest "bog person" discovered at a Bord na Móna site in Co Meath last week. The headless body was found among a stack of peat by workers on Friday morning near Kinnegad.
An archaeological team from the National Museum was dispatched to inspect the remains which were excavated on Saturday and transported to Dublin.
It is unclear at this stage the age, sex or cause of death, though those details are likely to emerge this week following examination by experts.
The discovery comes just over a year after that of the "Cashel Man" remains from a bog in Co Laois, which were thought to be those of a sacrificial victim.
There are just four such bodies on display at the National Museum on Kildare Street, Dublin.
"How ancient its year we won't be able to say yet but it is a bog body of some antiquity," said Maeve Sikora, an assistant keeper in the museum's Irish antiquities division.
"Its upper body appears to be intact and further analysis should be able to tell us how much else is there. It seems like it has been exposed to the air for quite a while and that would be damaging but nonetheless its condition is very good." |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5719 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-12-2012 10:29 Post subject: |
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| Hooray! |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-12-2012 13:35 Post subject: |
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The interesting thing is that it was cut and stacked before it was noticed. I wonder how often that happens? With the body section or artefact not being recognised and thrown away or burned. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 02-08-2013 21:11 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Co Laois bog body is world's oldest
Updated: 17:40, Friday, 02 August 2013
ArticleVideo (1)
The body was found by a Bord na Móna worker two years ago The body was found by a Bord na Móna worker two years ago
Tests carried out to age Laois bog body
Tests carried out to age Laois bog body
Related Stories
Portlaoise bog body could be 3,000 years old
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0802/466108-bog-body/
New tests on the remains of a preserved body found in a Co Laois bog have revealed that it is the oldest bog body ever discovered in the world.
The body was found by a Bord na Móna worker milling peat in 2011.
It was initially believed that the remains were those of a young female which were around 2,500 years old.
However, a series of recent tests have revealed that it is the body of a male, which dates back as far as 2000 BC.
The chemical makeup of bogs can preserve human bodies for thousands of years.
Older bog bodies have been discovered elsewhere but none as mummified or as well preserved as this example.
Archaelogists said the body which is believed to be a member of historic royalty, was almost certainly put to the sword by his own people.
The body is missing its head, which has never been recovered. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-08-2013 21:40 Post subject: |
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More details.
| Quote: | Laois ‘bog body’ said to be world’s oldest
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/laois-bog-body-said-to-be-world-s-oldest-1.1483171
4,000-year-old remains were discovered on Bord na Móna land in Co Laois in 2011
The bog body found by Jason Phelan at the Bord Na Mona Cashel Bog, in Co Laois. The body is estimated to be over 4,000 years old, and is possibly the result of a human sacrifice. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times.
The bog body found by Jason Phelan at the Bord Na Mona Cashel Bog, in Co Laois. The body is estimated to be over 4,000 years old, and is possibly the result of a human sacrifice. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times.
Eoin Burke-Kennedy
First published:
Fri, Aug 2, 2013, 17:44
The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.
The 4,000-year-old remains, which predate the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun by nearly 700 years, are those of a young adult male.
He is believed to have met a violent death in some sort of ritual sacrifice.
The body was unearthed in the Cúl na Móna bog in Cashel in 2011 by a Bord na Móna worker operating a milling machine.
Initially, experts thought it dated from the Iron Age period (500BC-400AD), placing it on a par with similar finds in other Irish bogs.
However, radiocarbon tests on the body; the peat on which the body was lying; and a wooden stake found with the body, date the body to the early Bronze Age, around 2,000BC.
The discovery promises to open a new chapter in the archaeological record of Bronze Age burial in Ireland.
Eamonn Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, said previously the earliest bog body discovered in Ireland dated to around 1,300BC but “Cashel man” substantially predates this period, making one of the most significant finds in recent times.
He said the remains are those of a young adult male which were placed in a crouched position and covered by peat, probably on the surface of the bog.
The man’s arm was broken by a blow and there were deep cuts to his back which appear to have been inflicted by a blade, which indicate a violent death, Mr Kelly said.
Unfortunately, the areas that would typically be targeted in a violent assault, namely the head, neck and chest, were damaged by the milling machine when the body was discovered, making it impossible to determine the exact cause of death.
Nonetheless, Mr Kelly believes the wounds on the body, combined with the fact that it was marked by wooden stakes and placed in proximity to an inauguration site, point to the individual being the victim of a ritual sacrifice.
“It seems to be same type of ritual that we’ve observed in later Iron Age finds. What’s surprising here is that it’s so much earlier.”
Because of the lack of calluses on the hands and the well-groomed
fingernails observed in other finds, though not this one as the hands were not recoverable, Mr Kelly suggests the victims were most likely “high-born”.
“We believe that the victims of these ritual killings are kings that have failed in their kingship and have been sacrificed as a consequence.”
The museum is awaiting further test results on samples taken from the man’s bowel which should reveal
the contents of the meal he was likely to have consumed before he died.
The chemical composition of bogs can preserve human bodies for thousands of years.
Archaelogists have discovered more than 100 ancient bodies in Irish bogs but few as well-preserved as “Cashel man”. |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 04-08-2013 00:38 Post subject: |
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| ramonmercado wrote: | More details.
| Quote: | Laois ‘bog body’ said to be world’s oldest
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/laois-bog-body-said-to-be-world-s-oldest-1.1483171
...
Because of the lack of calluses on the hands and the well-groomed
fingernails observed in other finds, though not this one as the hands were not recoverable, Mr Kelly suggests the victims were most likely “high-born”.
“We believe that the victims of these ritual killings are kings that have failed in their kingship and have been sacrificed as a consequence.”
The museum is awaiting further test results on samples taken from the man’s bowel which should reveal
the contents of the meal he was likely to have consumed before he died.
... |
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Or, The King's Messenger, if you believe The Wicker Man (and other sources). |
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| OneWingedBird Great Old One Joined: 19 Nov 2012 Total posts: 418 Location: Attice of blinkey lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 04-08-2013 11:34 Post subject: |
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| Maybe we could reintroduce this ritual for failed prime ministers. |
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