The well-preserved bog bodies of northern Europe have fascinated archaeologists, poets and film-makers, yet their discovery often concerned the communities who found them.
In this talk, Dr Melanie Giles (University of Manchester) shares the latest thinking about the phenomenon: explaining the science behind their preservation and the challenges this creates for museum curators, as well as discussing the ethics of displaying such remains. She situates them back within the bogs, mires and mosses from which they came; asking us to think differently about these landscapes and what they meant to prehistoric communities, as well as interrogating different ideas behind their often violent death and deposition in the bog. Amongst the cauldrons, weapons and foodstuffs also ‘offered up’ to the bog, she argues that some of them take their place as part of powerful exchanges with sacred entities but that others represent the ‘right place’ to inter those executed for crimes or dying mysterious or troubling deaths. Ending with the tale of Manchester’s own bog head – Worsley man – she will try and unpick the life and death of this bog head, whose story must be placed within that of the Roman occupation of northern Britain.
