Bog bodies uncovered : solving Europe's ancient mystery PDF
Preview Bog bodies uncovered : solving Europe's ancient mystery
About the Authors Miranda Aldhouse-Green is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University. She specializes in the study of shamanism and archaeology of the Iron Age. She has published widely on the Celts and their world, including: The Celtic Myths, Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend and Exploring the World of the Druids. Val McDermid is a bestselling novelist, recipient of the Gold Dagger award for Best Crime Novel of the Year and cofounder of the world’s largest crime fiction festival. Her novels have been translated into over thirty languages, selling more than eleven million copies worldwide. She recently released Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime (2014), an exploration of the science behind crime scene investigation. Other titles of interest published by Thames & Hudson include: The Celtic Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend The World of the Celts The World of the Druids See our websites www.thamesandhudson.com www.thamesandhudsonusa.com CONTENTS FOREWORD Val McDermid INTRODUCTION Unveiling the Dead: Introducing the Bog Bodies of Ancient Europe CHAPTER 1 Discoveries & Discoverers CHAPTER 2 The World of the Bog People: Space, Time and Society CHAPTER 3 The Magic of Bog Preservation CHAPTER 4 Crime Scene Investigation: The Application of Forensic Science CHAPTER 5 Accident, Execution or Murder? CHAPTER 6 Modus Operandi: Ways of Killing CHAPTER 7 Instrumental Violence: Abuse with Purpose CHAPTER 8 The Chosen Ones CHAPTER 9 Natural Born Killers CHAPTER 10 Bog Deaths & Human Sacrifice EPILOGUE Listening to the Dead: Bog Bodies Uncovered APPENDIX NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS INDEX COPYRIGHT FOREWORD Val McDermid We all carry our history under our skin. Where we’ve been, what we’ve done, how we lived. But for thousands of years that history, which our ancestors took to the grave, remained secret. Now, thanks to the giant leaps science has made in recent years, we can read those messages from the past. And finally, we can begin to peel back the layers and reveal the answers to mysteries that have confounded us for generations. Among the most puzzling of those mysteries was that of the ancient bog bodies of Northern Europe. Buried in peat marshes and bogs, the unique environment meant their remains were preserved to a remarkable extent. That was exciting enough in itself for archaeologists and anthropologists. But what gradually became clear was that many of the bodies discovered – generally by chance, by farmers and peat cutters – had met violent deaths at the hands of others. What crime writer wouldn’t be fascinated by this phenomenon? My own interest in the subject was piqued by an idea I had for a book that had its roots in the relatively recent past, a mere couple of hundred years ago. The Grave Tattoo was inspired by one fact and one rumour. The fact: the poet William Wordsworth and the Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian went to school together in the Lake District. The rumour: Fletcher Christian didn’t die on Pitcairn Island in the South Seas – he returned to England, where he was sheltered from the forces of law and order by his friends and family. I began to build a present-day thriller round these historic events, but I needed something dramatic to kick-start the story. I remembered seeing the recovered bog body known as Lindow Man on display in Manchester Museum in the late 1980s. I’d been astonished at the degree of preservation it displayed, and the amount of information scientists had been able to garner from it. I wondered if a body that had only been in a bog for two hundred years could reveal even more. I soon discovered how forensic techniques had evolved – and are still evolving – to provide data on everything from the diet these people consumed to the places where they lived and travelled while they were alive. Analysis of teeth and bones gives us an astonishingly detailed timeline of their movements. Thanks to mass spectrometry, now we can even tell where their mothers were living when they were pregnant. Facial reconstruction experts reveal what these people looked like in life. And we can uncover the violence with which they met their deaths. All perfect grist to the mill for my fiction. Because I get to make up the bits between the science, the pieces of the puzzle we can’t quite grasp. What we can’t know are the underlying reasons behind the facts. But by learning all we can, it’s possible to come up with coherent theories that make sense of what we see. And that’s where Miranda Aldhouse-Green has come to our aid. In this fascinating exploration of the phenomenon of bog bodies, she whets our appetite with the big picture of where, when and how these bodies began to turn up. Then she examines the detail of a selection of the bodies, revealing how they gave up their secrets to us over the years and exposing the violence and apparent ritual that mark so many of their deaths. Finally she delves under the shroud of mystery that surrounds them, exploring theories and suggesting histories for their lives that make sense of their deaths. Human beings are curious by nature. We like answers. That’s one of the reasons I believe crime fiction is so popular. We can never know for certain how these bodies ended up with this very particular form of burial. The reasons are lost in a past that left no written records. All we can do is interrogate what is left. And that is what this book does so satisfyingly.
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