Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination by Karin Sanders: review

From the Telegraph:

Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination

By Karin Sanders

CHICAGO UP, £26, 317pp

In 1969, PV Glob, a distinguished professor of archeology in Denmark, published a remarkable book. The Bog People was written in response to a request from a group of schoolgirls at an English convent. These young ladies had become excited about photographs of the mysterious discovery, in a Danish bog, of a almost perfectly preserved body dating back to the Iron Age and known as the Tollund Man, from the area in which he was found.

He lay in the ancient peat, entirely naked except for a thin leather cap and a lanyard around his neck. As Glob described in his charming, plainly written book, Tollund Man joined Grauballe Man and Windeby Girl (who turned out to be Windeby Boy), disinterred from the Jutland fens; a mute, macabre gathering looking like crumpled, leathery marionettes.

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Lindow Man to be star attraction at Great North Museum

Published in The Journal, May 15th 2009 by Tony Henderson:

ONE of the most fascinating figures from distant history will be the star of the Great North Museum’s first major exhibition.

The £26m venture, based on the Hancock Museum in Newcastle, opens on May 23.

And its summer exhibition, running from August 1 to November 27, will feature Iron Age Lindow Man, whose remarkably preserved body was found in a peat bog in Cheshire.

Lindow Man, who lived in the First Century AD was discovered in August 1984 when workmen were cutting peat at Lindow Moss bog.

Nicknamed Pete Marsh, he will come to Newcastle on loan from the British Museum.

Research by British Museum scientists has provided more information on Lindow Man – his health, appearance and how he might have died – than on any other prehistoric person who lived in Britain.

The conditions in the peat bog meant that the man’s skin, hair and many of his internal organs are well preserved. Radiocarbon dating shows that he died between AD 20 and 90.

He was about 25 years of age, around 168cm tall and weighed 60-65 kg. He had probably done very little hard, manual work, because his finger nails were well manicured.

His beard and moustache had been cut by a pair of shears. There is no evidence that he was unwell when he died, but he was suffering from parasitic worms. His last meal probably included unleavened bread made from wheat and barley, cooked over a fire on which heather had been burnt.

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