Lindow Man - 2,000 year-old body in the bog
Lindow Man, also known as Pete Marsh, is the preserved 2000-year-old body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire. The remains, estimated to have been deposited between 2 BC and 119 AD, were found in 1984 by commercial peat cutters.
Lindow Man is one of 27 bodies to be recovered from such areas, which provide a special form of presentation.
The Lindow Moss area formed after the last ice age, one of many such peat bogs in north-east Cheshire. Once covering over 1,500 acres, it has now shrunk to a tenth of its original size. For centuries the peat from the bog was used as fuel, right through until the 1980s, by which time the process had been mechanised.
On 1st August 1984, Andy Mould took what he thought was a piece of wood off the elevator of a peat-shredding machine, when peat fell off the object was seen to be a human foot, and the police were called. A complete excavation of the block produced more of a human body which was moved to Macclesfield District General Hospital for storage, and donated to the British Museum.
An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be that, after a last meal of charred bread, Lindow Man was strangled, hit on the head, and his throat cut. He was estimated to be between 5'6" and 5'8" tall, and in his mid-20s, with a trimmed beard, moustache, and sideburns of brown hair, as well as healthy teeth. Manicured fingernails, indicated he did little heavy or rough work. Apart from a fox-fur armband, Lindow Man was discovered completely naked.
Although dated to the mid-1st century AD, the type of burial of Lindow Man was more common in the pre-historic period. Scholars widely believe that bog bodies demonstrating injuries to the neck or head area are examples of ritual sacrifice.
Lindow Man is now held in the British Museum. The bog body has been on temporary display in other venues: at the Manchester Museum on three occasions, and at the Great North Museum in Newcastle in 2009.
Further reading
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