Bog body

[2] Unlike most ancient human remains, bog bodies often retain their skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of the surrounding area.

[3] The acidic conditions of these bogs allow for the preservation of materials such as skin, hair, nails, wool and leather which all contain the protein keratin.

[13] For example, in the area of Denmark where the Haraldskær Woman was recovered, salty air from the North Sea blows across the Jutland wetlands and provides an ideal environment for the growth of peat.

This environment, highly acidic and devoid of oxygen, denies the prevalent subsurface aerobic organisms any opportunity to initiate decomposition.

Researchers discovered that preservation also requires that the body is placed in the bog during the winter or early spring when the water temperature is cold – i.e., less than 4 °C (39 °F).

Modern experimenters have been able to mimic bog conditions in the laboratory and successfully demonstrated the preservation process, albeit over shorter time frames than the 2,500 years that Haraldskær Woman's body has survived.

[20] It was during the early part of this Neolithic period that a number of human corpses that were interred in the area's peat bogs left evidence that there had been resistance to its introduction.

[21] A disproportionate number of the Early Neolithic bodies found in Danish bogs were aged between 16 and 20 at the time of their death and deposition, and suggestions have been put forward that they were either human sacrifices or criminals executed for their socially deviant behaviour.

Many of these Iron Age bodies bear a number of similarities, indicating a known cultural tradition of killing and depositing these people in a certain manner.

[22] For these people, the bogs held some sort of liminal significance, and indeed, they placed into them votive offerings intended for the Otherworld, often of neck-rings, wristlets or ankle-rings made of bronze or more rarely gold.

[24] Explicit reference to the practice of drowning slaves who had washed the cult image of Nerthus and were subsequently ritually drowned in Tacitus' Germania, suggesting that the bog bodies were sacrificial victims may be contrasted with a separate account (Germania XII), in which victims of punitive execution were pinned in bogs using hurdles.

Similarly to Tollund Man, Yde Girl, who was found in the Netherlands and was approximately 16 years old at her time of death, has a woollen rope with a sliding knot still tied around her neck.

Some of the bog bodies seem consistently to have been members of the upper class: their fingernails are manicured, and tests on hair protein routinely record good nutrition.

[31] Modern techniques of forensic analysis now suggest that some injuries, such as broken bones and crushed skulls, were not the result of torture, but rather due to the weight of the bog.

However, a CT scan of Grauballe Man by Danish scientists determined his skull was fractured due to pressure from the bog long after his death.

Archaeologists believe that early Archaic Native Americans buried the bodies in a freshwater pond when the sea level was much lower.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, when such bodies were discovered, they were often removed from the bogs and given a Christian burial on consecrated church grounds in keeping with the religious beliefs of the community who found them, who often assumed that they were relatively modern.

[42] With the rise of antiquarianism in the 19th century, some people began to speculate that many of the bog bodies were not recent murder victims but were ancient in origin.

In 1843, at Corselitze on Falster in Denmark, a bog body unusually buried with ornaments (seven glass beads and a bronze pin) was unearthed and subsequently given a Christian burial.

Scientists have been able to study the skin of the bog bodies, reconstruct their appearance and even determine what their last meal was from their stomach contents since peat marsh preserves soft internal tissue.

For example, Tollund man of Denmark, whose remains were recovered in 1950, has undergone radiocarbon analyses that place his death date to around the 3rd or 4th century.

[46] More modern analyses using stable isotope measurements have allowed scientists to study bone collagen collected from Tollund Man to determine his diet as being terrestrial-based.

Originally designed for identifying modern faces in crime investigations, this technique is a way of working out the facial features of a person by the shape of their skull.

The face of one bog body, Yde Girl, was reconstructed in 1992 by forensic pathologist Richard Neave of Manchester University using CT scans of her head.