Lindow Man

Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and Pete Marsh, is the name given to the naturally-preserved bog body of an Iron Age man, discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss, Mobberley side of the border with Wilmslow, Cheshire, northwest England, on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat-cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have been recovered.

Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s. He may have been someone of high status, such as a druid, as his body shows little evidence of heavy or rough work. The nature of his death was violent, perhaps ritualistic; after a last, charred meal, Lindow Man was strangled, hit on the head, and his throat was cut. His body was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time during the 1st century AD.

The body has been preserved by freeze drying, and is now usually on display in the recently refurbished Gallery 50 of the British Museum, London. It is on loan from the British Museum under its Partnership UK scheme to form the exhibition "Lindow Man: a bog body mystery" at the Manchester Museum from 19 April 2008–19 April 2009.

Background

Lindow Moss

Lindow Moss is a peat bog in Mobberley, Cheshire, used as common land since the medieval period. It originally covered over convert|600|ha|acre, but has since shrunk to a tenth of its original size. The bog is a dangerous place; an 18th-century writer recorded people drowning there. For centuries the peat from the bog was used as fuel, and it continued to be extracted until the 1980s, by which time the process had been mechanised.Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=13.]

Lindow Woman

On 13 May 1983, two peat workers at Lindow Moss, Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley, noticed an unusual object about the size of a football on the elevator taking peat to the shredding machine. They took the object off the elevator for closer inspection, joking that it was a dinosaur egg. Once the peat had been removed, their discovery turned out to be a decomposing, incomplete human head with one eye and some hair intact. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=11.] Forensics identified the skull as belonging to a woman, probably aged 30–50. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=11–12.] On hearing the news of the discovery of the remains Peter Reyn-Bardt, who lived near Lindow Moss, believed it was the body of his wife. Mrs Reyn-Bardt had disappeared in 1960 and was the subject of an ongoing investigation by police. Peter Reyn-Bardt confessed to the murder of his wife and was tried and convicted.Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=12.] The skull was later radiocarbon dated, revealing it to be nearly 2,000 years old. "Lindow Woman", as it became known, dated from around 210 AD.

Discovery

A further gruesome discovery was made at Lindow Moss, a year after Lindow Woman which was found just convert|250|m|ft to the north east of the new find. On 1 August 1984, Andy Mould, who had been part of the discovery of Lindow Woman in 1983, took what he thought was a piece of wood off the elevator of the peat-shredding machine. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=13–14.] He threw the object at Eddie Slack, his workmate. When it hit the ground, peat fell off the object and revealed it to be human foot. The police were called and took the foot away for examination. Rick Turner, the county archaeologist was notified of the discovery and himself found the rest of Lindow Man's body. Some skin had been exposed and had started to decay, so to prevent further deterioration of the body, it was recovered with peat. The complete excavation of the peat block containing the remains was performed on 6 August. Until it could be dated, it was moved to the Macclesfield District Council Hospital for storage. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=14.] At the time, the body was dubbed "Pete Marsh" (a pun on "peat marsh") by Middlesex Hospital radiologists, a name subsequently adopted by local journalists. [Harvnb|Stead|Bourke|Brothwell|1986|p=12, 16.] Lindow Man's official name is "Lindow II" as there are other finds from the area; "Lindow I" refers to two human skulls, "Lindow III" to fragments of a headless body, and "Lindow IV" to the upper thigh of an adult male, possibly that of Lindow Man.citation |title=Lindow Man |url=http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_prb/l/lindow_man.aspx |publisher=BritishMuseum.org Retrieved on 22 September 2008.]

Remains and interpretation

In life, Lindow Man would have between 5'6" (1.68 m) and 5'8" (1.73 m) tall and have weighed about 10 stone (132 lb, 60 kg). Only the top half of the body was recovered, but from that it was possible to ascertain it was that of a man in his mid-20s. The body retains a trimmed beard, moustache, and sideburns of brown/ginger hair as well as healthy teeth with no visible cavities and manicured fingernails, indicating he did little heavy or rough work. Apart from a fox-fur armband, Lindow Man was discovered completely naked.Harvnb|Renfrew|Bahn|2006|p=456.] Green deposits were found in the hair, originally thought to be a copper-based pigment used for decoration, however it was later revealed to be the result of a reaction between the keratin in the hair and the acid of the peat bog. When he died, Lindow Man was suffering from slight osteoarthritis and an infestation of whipworm and maw worm. [Harvnb|Renfrew|Bahn|2006|pp=456–457.] Dating Lindow Man is problematic as samples from the body and surrounding peat have produced dates spanning a 900-year period. Although the peat encasing Lindow Man has been radiocarbon dated to about 300 BC, Lindow Man himself has a different date, [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=16–17.] between about 20 AD and 90 AD.

As the peat was cleaned off the body in the laboratory, it became clear that Lindow Man had suffered a violent death. There was a convert|3|cm|in wound in the middle of the right collar bone, a broken jaw, a broken neck, a sinew thong wrapped around a cut throat, and xeroradiography revealed he also had his skull fractured by a blunt object. Although some of the damage to the body could have occurred "post mortem", the strangulation (as proven by the thong and broken neck), cut throat, and head injury suggest Lindow Man was murdered. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=25–27.] According to Brothwell, it is one of the most complex examples of "overkill" in a bog body, and possibly has ritual meaning as it was "extravagant" for a straightforward murder. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=28–29.] With more than 100 similarly executed bog bodies having been discovered across Europe, there is the possibility of a widespread ritual practice.citation |title=Lindow Man - the body in the bog - goes home to Manchester Museum |url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/whats_on/article3706773.ece |publisher="The Times" |author=Richard Morrison |date=12 April 2008 Retrieved on 22 September 2008.]

Lindow Man's last meal was preserved in his stomach, which also contained a couple of pebbles. Analysis of the grains present revealed his diet to be mostly of cereals. He probably ate a charred bread, although the burning may have had ritual significance rather than being an accident. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=90, 94.] Some mistletoe pollen was also found in the stomach, indicating that Lindow Man died in around March or April. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|pp=95–96.]

Dr Anne Ross and Don Robins have suggested that Lindow Man was a high-status druid, which would explain the evidence of minimal hard labour. They proposed that he was sacrificed, possibly during the feast of Beltain on 31 April, to invoke three Celtic gods against the Romans in the 1st century AD. [citation |title=Back from the bog |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEED8163FF934A25755C0A966958260 |publisher="New York Times" |author=Malcome W. Browne |date=17 June 1990 Retrieved on 22 September 2008.] Ross has also suggested that the triple-death was intended to affect three gods, as different modes of death were meant to influence different gods. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=96.] An alternative view is suggested by the writer John Grigsby who suggested he met his death as a "sacrificial king" in a fertility cult, perhaps similar to the cults of Atys and Osiris in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt.

Conservation

Once Lindow Man was removed from the peat, it was possible that it might begin to decay. After rejecting methods used to preserve other bog bodies, such as "pit-tanning" as used on Grauballe Man which took a year and a half, freeze-drying was settled on. The body was frozen solid and the ice vaporised to ensure Lindow Man did not shrink. Before it was freeze-dried, the body was covered in a solution of 15% polyethylene glycol 400 and 85% water to prevent the body from becoming distorted. After freeze-drying, Lindow Man was put in a specially constructed display case to control the environment and carefully maintain the temperature at convert|19|°C|°F. [Harvnb|Brothwell|1986|p=23.] Lindow Man is in the care of the British Museum, although from April 2008 until April 2009 he is on display in Manchester Museum. "The Guardian" described it as one of the best preserved ancient bodies found in Britain. [citation |title=First-century Lindow Man goes back to his roots |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/28/archaeology.forensicscience |publisher="The Guardian" |author=Maev Kennedy |date=28 January 2008 Retrieved on 22 September 2008.] Its cabinet is so sensitive that even during recent renovations it was considered wiser to leave it boxed in a protective casing of hoardings than to take the risk of moving it.

ee also

* Celts and human sacrifice
* Haraldskær Woman
* Ötzi the Iceman
* Tollund Man
* Worsley Man

References

;Notes;Bibliography
*citation |last=Brothwell |first=Don |authorlink=Don Brothwell |title=The Bogman and the Archaeology of People |publisher=British Museum Publications |year=1986 |isbn=0-7141-1384-0
*citation |last1=Renfrew |first1=Colin |authorlink1=Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn |last2=Bahn |first2=Paul |authorlink2=Paul Bahn |title=Archaeology:Theories, Methods and Practice |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=2006 |isbn=0-500-28441-5
*citation |last1=Stead |first1=I. M. |last2=Bourke |first2=John |last3=Brothwell |first3=Don |authorlink3=Don Brothwell |title=Lindow Man: The Body in the Bog |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1986 |isbn=0801419980

Further reading

*cite book |last=Grigsby |first=John |authorlink=John Grigsby |title=Warriors of the Wasteland: A Quest for the Pagan Sacrificial Cult Behind the Grail Legends |publisher=Watkins Publishing Ltd |year=2003 |isbn=1842930583
*cite book |last=Ross |first=Anne |coauthors=Robins, Don |title=Life and Death of a Druid Prince |publisher=Touchstone |year=1991 |isbn=0671741225

External links

* [http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects97/dentep/boglindow.htm Lindow Man]