Content warning: descriptions of historical violence.
In 1984, a well-preserved body of a man was discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Wilmslow. His leathered remains were radiocarbon dated to the early Roman period, between 2BC and 119AD, probably during the unrest caused by the Roman military occupation of the North.
His body was bludgeoned, with head trauma, a broken rib, and the twisted sinew of a garrotte — a ligature used for strangulation— still wrapped around his neck: all the indication of a violent death.
Named Lindow Man, this body fits into a rich catalogue of well-preserved early human remains, a phenomenon that offers a face-to-face confrontation with the past.
The unique conditions of bogs, which are cold and aerobic, are hostile to the micro-organisms that break down soft tissue. Moreover, sphagnum moss creates a complex polysaccharide reaction, inhibiting decomposition and acting as a tanning agent. This resulting environment provides archaeologists with an exceptional source for the lives of people from prehistory.
Melanie Giles, Professor of European Prehistory at the University of Manchester, considers bogs “special landscapes”. From them, Iron Age people took iron ore or peat for fuel and used the mossland’s resources for craftwork and medicine. As “exchange societies”, she suggests they had to make offerings to the bogs in return.
In her book Bog Bodies, Giles emphasises a resistance to judge these communities through a contorting modern lens. The violent sacrifices were inevitably connected to beliefs surrounding power and fertility, in which violence may be understood as a way to make an extraordinary offering, and was part of strategies of control and authority.
The Roman military occupation may have been a time of crisis in which these kinds of sacrifices were thought necessary, but it must also have increased conflict amongst local Iron Age communities. I spoke to Melanie Giles surrounding the context of Lindow Man’s death and the process of his preservation.
Giles outlines the cause of Lindow Man’s death as a mixture of wounds. He has a large head trauma wound “caused by something like a club”, which split his skull in two places so that it was fatal but not immediately so. He also has a rib fracture, which is being confirmed by a new CT scan at the British Museum, a stab wound to the throat, and a garrotte.
There is debate surrounding the nature of these individual wounds, as well as a suggestion of the garrotte as a necklace, which Giles dismisses. “It’s too tight and has these folds and knots in it that there is no reason to have unless it is a garotte”.
Therefore, she suggests there is a sense that “he might have been pushed to his knees, quite violently, hit over the head and then … he is garrotted and then his throat is cut, which obviously exacerbates blood flow”.
It is complex to determine why he was killed, but the exacerbated blood flow is of particular resonance to the idea that he was a blood sacrifice.
In comparison to the Worsley Head, a decapitated head housed in the Manchester Museum, who is assumed to have been murdered elsewhere and disposed of in the bog, Giles asserts that Lindow Man was killed on the bog. Moreover, she asserts that (by way of the multiple wounds) he was killed by multiple people.
“Although we can never say for certain, this has the feel of a sacrifice for me. Out of all the different cases we know of, I think this looks very deliberate. It has a sense of ritualised performance to it”.
Considering the nature of exchange societies, it is possible that Lindow Man was perhaps transgressing the laws of his society or, as Giles believes, “he [was] possibly a self-sacrifice, a kind of emissary, taking the next step into that world, to go to appeal to the gods at a time of crisis”.
This crisis could be the violent arrival of the Romans in Britain perhaps, or another societal or environmental issue.
Dr Ian Stead and his team led the excavation in 1984, utilising a full forensic investigation that used environmental analysis, forensic specialists and surgeons involved in a forensic autopsy.
Giles asserts that their investigation was “exemplary” and, whilst there is room for scientific re-evaluations and studies in the light of technological advancements in archaeology, this is only possible thanks to the “excellence of the original project”.
Lindow Man’s discovery was complicated by the initial association of his remains with the disappearance of a woman who had gone missing nearby 20 years before. There are often preliminary worries of criminality when exhuming human remains, resulting in the careful evaluation of the find-spot by forensic specialists, who look for synthetic material, such as plastic, that would suggest a recent murder.
Archaeologists can then evaluate the remains, looking for any material evidence that could help date the body. If there is nothing or just a few organic remains, the assumption is made that the remains are much older. Once this process of elimination takes place, a radiocarbon dating of the body is obtained.
Lindow Man was preserved through freeze-drying. This removed any moisture and then replaced it with a polyethylene glycol solution, which rehydrated the body with a material that could potentially be removed. “That stabilises the body and tries to stop further organic decay”.
Lindow Man is kept on display in the British Museum in a case that is precise in its temperature and humidity.
Preserved human remains, particularly bog bodies, have continually captured our imagination and catalysed a creative outpour. Bog bodies move us in a way that is hard to enunciate.
Irish poet Seamus Heaney published his noteworthy collection North, in 1975. It was influenced by Peter V. Glob’s seminal book The Bog People.
In an essay titled ‘Feeling Into Words’, Heaney outlined the effect of this book’s impact on him. “The unforgettable photographs of these victims blended in my mind with the photographs of atrocities, past and present, in the long rites of Irish political and religious struggles”.
Heaney utilised the poignant imagery of bog bodies to talk about the contemporary cycle of violence in Ireland, expressing the enduring concepts of sacrifice and ritualised killing that transcend time.
“The reason, as archaeologists, why we love his bog poems is that they simply talk, very boldly, about violence in the past”, says Melanie Giles.
Giles, like Heaney, first encountered bog bodies as a child through Glob’s book, positioning her face-to-face with people of the past.
Bog bodies speak to her in a way “that can be quite direct and disconcerting … there is something about being able to actually see someone’s face that draws us in, as we are programmed to respond to humanity”.
Indeed, bog bodies offer us an intimate connection with our past or, perhaps more troublingly, hold up a mirror in which we can see a violent and paranoid reflection of human nature. Heaney’s bog poetry collapses time and utilises a historical past to consider the violence— political, local or gendered— that endures in human history. The capacity to bridge the past and the present is the power of the bog bodies and one that, for Giles, “makes the work of archaeologists timely and relevant”.
40 years later, Lindow Man is incredibly resonant, with an ongoing debate surrounding the ethics of displaying human remains.
Giles promotes the display of human remains in the case of a strong scientific and environmental case for excavation, for example, when they’ve already been exhumed by peat diggers and simply cannot be reburied. Moreover, she suggests that archaeologists “have care of the dead”, with standards of care that ensure their stability and integrity are maintained.
Aside from enabling us to find out more about past humanity, “human remains in museums are usually our first encounter with mortality”. They catalyse conversations around loss, grief and death. Rather than presenting a past that is riddled with violence and brutality then, bog bodies are able to intimately illuminate to us a certainty that is shared across common humanity: death.
For more information on the Lindow Man, as well as upcoming opportunities for participation in art and poetry exhibitions, please visit www.discoverlindow.org .
