{"id":6636,"date":"2014-07-29T08:03:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T14:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6636"},"modified":"2014-07-28T19:04:57","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T01:04:57","slug":"rethinking-bog-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6636","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Bog People"},"content":{"rendered":"

In college I had a work-study job in the library, and my favorite part was shelving books, because I worked alone, deep in the stacks, and if I found something interesting, I could skim it quickly and either check it out or come back for it.\"bogpeople_thumb[2]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One day I rolled my cart up to the rows of books awaiting reshelving, and there was one whose spine read The Bog People \u2014 Glob<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Was this for real?\u00a0 BogGlobBog<\/em>?<\/p>\n

It turned out to be serious anthropology: Here is an\u00a0American Anthropologist<\/em> review (PDF) from 1969<\/a>, when it was published. Pagan sacrifices? Medieval murders? I think I learned the word liripipe<\/a> from reading The Bog People<\/em>, rather than by joining the Society for Creative Anachronism.<\/p>\n

The bog mummies are so fascinating because of their state of preservation. They are not just bones \u2013 you can see them as individuals, often wearing the clothing in which they died.<\/p>\n

People create stories about them, such as Lindow Man, the so-called Druid prince.<\/a> Did he suffer a ritualistic Robert Graves-ish triple death \u2014 clubbing, throat-cutting, and strangulation?<\/p>\n

Others, such as Ronald Hutton, offer a simpler explanation: the so-called throat-cutting was the accidental slash of the peat-cutter’s spade, the ligature merely a cord holding an amulet or piece of jewelry, and the cause of death was a straightforward bludgeoning \u2014 why, no one knows.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists debate whether the bog bodies were simple crime victims or ritual-murder victims.<\/a> Were they locals or outsiders? Ordinary people or celebrities?<\/p>\n

Because some bear horrific wounds, such as slashed throats, and were buried instead of cremated like most others in their communities, scientists have suggested the bodies had been sacrificed as criminals, slaves, or simply commoners. The Roman historian Tacitus<\/a> started this idea in the first century A.D. by suggesting they were deserters and criminals. . . .<\/p>\n

Niels Lynnerup<\/a>, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen who has studied bog bodies, believes that they were sacrificed\u2014but the enigma, he said, revolves around why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You look at their faces, and you wonder how they ended up tossed into a pool in a bog.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In college I had a work-study job in the library, and my favorite part was shelving books, because I worked alone, deep in the stacks, and if I found something interesting, I could skim it quickly and either check it out or come back for it. One day I rolled my cart up to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,156,21],"class_list":["post-6636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-denmark","tag-england"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1J2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":924,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=924","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":0},"title":"Bog Bodies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was shelving library books for my college work-study job when I saw it: \"The Bog People Glob,\" the spine announced. After rolling that around in my mouth, \"bog people glob bog people glob,\" I had to check it out.And so the Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob introduced me to some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":589,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=589","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":1},"title":"Bodies in the bogFrom the\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Bodies in the bogFrom the Daily Mirror, headlined \"Murdered 2,500 Years Ago\":Tortured, maimed and disembowelled, the two savagely slaughtered bodies were a grisly sight for the Irish peat bog workers who unearthed them.One of the dead men was found in County Meath, Ireland. The other was discovered three months later,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6321,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6321","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":2},"title":"Caffeine and the Sun God","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"As a freezing fog swirls through the pines, I lift my coffee mug and think of the sun \u2014 and coffee! Thursday was a much warmer day: M. and I went to Pueblo for supplies, and after a stop at Hercules Liquor for beer and wine, had a late breakfast\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"winter\"","block_context":{"text":"winter","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=winter"},"img":{"alt_text":"solarroast","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/solarroast.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9461,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9461","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":3},"title":"Pagan Idols of the Mesolithic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Across northern Europe from the Ural Mountains to Ireland, the people erected wooden figures, of them quite large, as the ice age known as the Younger Dryas waned and the people could move into new, now-forested, lands. And they kept on during so until more recent times. At Twilight Beasts,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/screenshot_15.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12132,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12132","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":4},"title":"Ancient Idol Is Older than They Thought","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Shirgir Idol, a wooden statue that you may see at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore has now been re-dated, pushing its age back to 12,500 years before present.\u00a0 In North American terms, that is about the time of the \"Clovis culture,\" when hunters with big spearpoints pursued\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"Head of the Shirgir idol","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2021\/03\/00SCI-IDOL1-superJumbo-800x1024.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7419,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7419","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":5},"title":"A Viking is Nothing without his Oar","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Nydam ship was found in southern Jutland in 1863. It has recently been dated via dendrochronology to 310\u2013320 CE, and the deposition in the bog where it was found is likely to have taken place 340\u2013350 CE. The picture shows a German replica of the ship, built in 1935.((Harald\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"nydam","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/nydam.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6636"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6642,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6636\/revisions\/6642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}