17 articles
Bog body
Bog body (Moorleiche): a human corpse naturally mummified in acidic, anaerobic peat bogs, preserving skin, hair, and nails while bone dissolves. Famous finds include Tollund Man, Grauballe Man, and Lindow Man, mostly Iron Age deaths.
Bog butter
Bog butter is waxy buried animal fat, mostly ruminant dairy, chemically altered during burial to resemble adipocere, recovered from Irish and Scottish peat bogs from the Early Bronze Age onward.
Bog-wood
Bog-wood, also called bog oak when from oak, is subfossil wood preserved for hundreds or thousands of years in waterlogged peat bogs and river sediments; jet-black bog oak underpins European oak dendrochronologies reaching 8480 BC and supplies archaeological trackway timber.
Cashel Man
Cashel Man is an Early Bronze Age bog body found in 2011 in Cashel Bog, County Laois, Ireland, dated around 2000 BC, the oldest fleshed bog body known, showing violent death and interpreted as a kingship sacrifice.
Conservation and restoration of waterlogged wood
Conservation and restoration of waterlogged wood treats archaeological or historical wood from shipwrecks, wells, and bogs, most often by impregnation with polyethylene glycol followed by controlled drying.
Corduroy road
Corduroy road: a road of logs laid transversely across swampy ground, also called log crossway. Known from a 4780 BC German track, used by Civil War armies, colonists, and still in forestry.
Glastonbury Lake Village
Glastonbury Lake Village is an Iron Age crannog settlement of 90 mounds and 40 roundhouses on the Somerset Levels near Godney, discovered in 1892 by Arthur Bulleid, excavated 1892–1907, occupied roughly 200–50 BC.
Grauballe Man
Grauballe Man (Grauballemanden) is a Danish Iron Age bog body found in Nebelgaard Bog in 1952, dated around 390 BC, executed by throat-cutting, and displayed at Moesgaard Museum as the world's best-preserved bog body.
Haraldskær Woman
Haraldskær Woman (Haraldskærkvinden), also long called Queen Gunhild, is a Danish Iron Age bog body found 20 October 1835 in Haraldskær Mose near Vejle; about 40 years old at death, strangled, never conserved, displayed at Kulturmuseet Vejle.
Lindow Woman
Lindow Woman (Lindow I), a female bog body skull found 13 May 1983 at Lindow Moss, Cheshire; initially dated 30-50 years old, it prompted Peter Reyn-Bardt's murder confession before radiocarbon dating showed it was Roman-era.
Old Croghan Man
Old Croghan Man: Irish Early Iron Age bog body (c. 362–175 BC) found June 2003 in Clonearl Bog, Co. Offaly; ~198 cm tall, manicured nails, ritual killing, displayed at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.
Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps (Pfahlbauten): UNESCO serial property of 111 stilt-house settlement sites, 5000-500 BC, in six Alpine countries, 56 in Switzerland, inscribed 2011 under criteria (iv) and (v).
Preservation in situ of waterlogged archaeological sites
Preservation in situ of waterlogged archaeological sites means leaving organic remains like wood buried in oxygen-poor waterlogged ground, the first option under the 1992 Valletta Convention.
Shigir Idol
Shigir Idol (Шигирский идол): an Early Mesolithic larch sculpture from a Urals peat bog, found 1894, dated c. 11,500 years old, the world's oldest known monumental wooden sculpture, displayed in Yekaterinburg.
Sweet Track
The Sweet Track is an Early Neolithic timber walkway in the Somerset Levels, England, built 3807/6 BC across about 2 km of reed swamp from Westhay to the Polden Hills; discovered in 1970 by peat digger Ray Sweet, it is Britain's oldest known timber trackway and a Scheduled Monument.
Tollund Man
Tollund Man (Tollundmanden), Iron Age Danish bog body found 1950 in Bjældskovdal bog near Silkeborg; hanged man dated 375–210 BC, displayed at Museum Silkeborg, famous for his preserved face and last-meal studies.
Yde Girl
Yde Girl (Meisje van Yde), a Dutch bog body of a 16-year-old girl strangled with a woollen band, found 1897 near Yde, Drenthe; radiocarbon dated 40 BC–AD 50; held in the Drents Museum, Assen.