Lindow Man: Britain's Prehistoric Body Author(s): R. C. Connolly Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 1, No. 5 (Oct., 1985), pp. 15-17 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032823 Accessed: 07/10/2009 16:33

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http://www.jstor.org Lindow Man Britain's prehistoric R.C.CONNOLLY

R. C. Connolly is senior The discovery last August of a prehistoric human mechanicaldigger cutting the ,and the two legs(we lecturer in physical body preserved in a peat bog sent a wave of assumehe hadtwo legs)dumped in a peatstack to drain. anthropology in the interest and excitement through the media and among It was the discoveryof the lowersegment of the right department of anatomy, the country's physical anthropologists and leg during peat-sortingthat led to the location and University of Liverpool. archaeologists. They were probably not only interested extractionof the rest of the body, but the upperpart in the information about the inhabitants of Iron Age of thatleg andthe wholeof the left leg aremissing with Britain which may emerge, but also satisfied and almost the exceptionof a few smallbone fragments.It seems relieved that at long last a bog body had turned up in unlikelynow that these parts will ever be recovered:they Britain; and in conditions making possible a reasonable have presumablyeither fed the local crowsand foxes scientific study. It is indeed strange that with some 10%o or arein somebody'stomato compost! The handstoo, of the surface of the BritishIsles coveredwith peat, much althoughpresent, are poorly preserved. The magnificent of which has been dug by man for severalcenturies, there stateof preservationof manyof the Danishspecimens are so few well-documented examples of British bog is accountedfor by theiractual burial deep in the peat, bodies that could reasonably be dated to more than a protectingthem from predators and human looters and couple of hundred years old. immediatelystarting the tanning and preservation Lindow Man was excavated from a peat bog on processesin the acid, anaerobic,microbially sterile Lindow Moss in the County of Cheshire, close to environmentof wet peat. We must howeverconsider Manchester's Ringway Airport. The area had been dug the recoveryof whatwe haveof LindowMan as being commercially for horticultural peat for more than 20 of particulargood fortunesince he was not buriedas years and before that had been dug and in places such, but left face downin a shallowpool of waterthe cultivated domestically. An early account of Lindow mudof whichis clearlydefined and thus exposed to the Moss' describesa 'Roman road' of which unfortunately ravages of his environmentfor some time before there is now no trace, and also that the Moss was preservationgot underway. inhabited by 'a peculiar race of people...dolicho- Some simplequestions have alreadybeen answered cephalic... leaden aspect.. .very sly and suspicious...', of from well establishedanthropological techniques. He whom also I can find no immediate trace! Some details must have been about 25 yearsof age, around 1.65 m of the discovery will be well-known to readers from the in stature,powerfully built and wellmuscled. The hair massive coverageafforded by the world's press and from of his head,sideburns and moustache has not of course the preliminary accounts in the archaeological retainedits originalcolour after prolonged wet exposure Field diagramshowing literature.2 I4 at an acidityvalue of pH 3.5 butlike his well-preserved locationof body in layer Unlike several of the bog bodies from Denmark and finger-nailshad, as evidencedby scanning electron of pool mud deep in the Northern Germany, Lindow Man is unfortunately microscopy, been neatly trimmed with a sharp peat section.F Oldfield, incomplete. Six months before his discovery and instrument.The remnants of the alimentarytract, N. Richardson,G. Yates. excavation he had been sectioned at the waist by a though histologicallyunremarkable, have yieldedup some preliminarydata from its contentswith evidence of round- and whip-worms(Ascaris and Trichuris respectively) and also of vegetable remnants, LINDOW MOSS BOG BODY presumablyfood, consistingof bothwheat and barley. Interpretationof the evidenceof some fragmentsof "s% Human remains Pool mud charredcereal has yet to be assessed:it may be baked E Disturbed peat PartlaNy excavated area around body as bread,or may result from the burning out of a storage Fresh peat Humilbed Eriophorum peat pit or even from naturalfire in the crops. Similarly, C Humilied EriophorumjCalluna peat T Position of peat monoliths whether chemicallydefined residues in the gut are with some Sphagnum derivedfrom animal food sourcesor from autolysisof his own tissueshas yet to be determined.Apart from remnantsof stomach,small intestine and trachea,the \\ w in peat \Crack due to collapse abdominaland thoracic viscera are sadly not preserved. of section The well-preservedear with free lobes and the meatus areunremarkable, but the eyesare not preservedintact. Theteeth, of whichthirty survive, are in placesheavily wornbut show no clearevidence of grossdecay. Because of the acidityof thepeat water, all the enamelis entirely dissolved away, so that Wecannot determinecaries frequency:in facteach tooth resembles superficially one huge post mortemcaries. 1 metre Who thenwas LindowMan? What was he doingon LindowCommon and when?How did he die? These

15 are all questions which anthropologists and If then he was presenton LindowCommon at the archaeologistswill wish to discussin the light of the earlieststage of its colonization,was he an earlysettler evidenceavailable, and there are diverse ways in which or was he an intruderfrom the surroundingregions? each individualwill wish to interpretthat evidence. Traceelement studies of bone,hair and finger nails may Artefactualdata on LindowMan himself and in the answerthis question,and neutron-activationanalysis immediatevicinity is sadlylacking. Around his left upper and electronmicroprobe work is in hand to elucidate armis a stripof animalskin and around his neck a thong some of the complexitiesof this problem. of twistedsinew, knottedneatly and decorativelybut One thing is certain:he was not alone on Lindow bearingno remainsof a charmor other object. The Commonon the day he died. Whetherhe was one of surroundingarea of the Moss shows no structural manyor just one of two is not certain,but he was not evidenceof habitationand no distributedartefacts - so alone. The injurieshe sufferedat or aroundthe time unlike the Somersetlevels with their abundanceof of his deathcould not havebeen self-inflictedeven by artefacts but despite extensive commercial and the wildestof masochists.There are severalareas of archaeologicalexcavation, no bog man (so far!). The damageto his body:some clearly postmortem changes, nearestseries of sitesof archaeologicalrelationship are othersnot so. The top of his headin the regionof the theBickerton Hill group some 30 miles East, with bronze coronalsuture displays a large flat soft-tissuewound axesatBeeston Castle and Dr. JoanTaylor's excavation severalcentimetres in diameterunder which the skull at MaidenCastie yielding evidence of habitationin the is smashedwith a largedepressed fracture, from which same episode to which LindowMan is assigned. at leastthree jagged fragments of bone now lie within The radiocarbon date of 550 B.C. + /- 200 y. would the empty cranialcavity. It does not appearto be a suggesta Celticstatus for LindowMan, but apart from woundfrom a sharpweapon like a sword,spear or axe: the fact that he is blood group0 thereis little that we more likelya blunt instrument,a club or heavystick. canadd to contributeto or detractfrom his Celticstatus The natureof this woundis graphicallydemonstrated withouttravelling into wild conjecture. His presenceon not by ordinaryX-ray imaging but by the RankXerox and his time of death seems to techniqueXeroradiography. The back of theneck shows coincidewith a periodof cultivationand humanusage a similarwound and the underlyingthird and fourth of the area. Professor Frank Oldfield's group at cervical vertebrae can be seen on Computerised LiverpoolUniversity have demonstrated that above and Tomography(CT scan), to be smashedinto several aroundthe body, the peat containsevidence for local pieces;which like the head woundis consistentwith a humanactivity of cultivationand disturbanceof the veryheavy blow from a bluntinstrument. The nature surroundingforest, with pollen records of cereals,weeds of the soft-tissuewounds to the head and neck allow anddisturbed ground in additionto charcoalremnants. insertionof a fingerand the multiplefractures seen in Theyalso suggestthat the peat was spreadingover the the imagingtechniques can readily be felt. Thereis also Lindow Man the wound surroundingarea during and afterthe time of Lindow a split on the right side of the neck which has been on the head and the thong Man'sburial, so possiblythe peat has sealed-in a record describedas 'the throat having been slit', but is less around his neck are clearly of contemporaryhuman activity around the bog convincingthan the ear-to-eargash in GraubelleMan. visible. margins. The blow on the head would certainlyhave stunned:

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16 and in prehistorictimes, with (we assume) little medical care,would probably have ultimately resulted in death. Theneck injury however would certainly have resulted in almost immediatedeath. Which came first is of peripheral interest only, although discussion has startec5:possibly the blowon the headcame first; then as he fell, theblow to theback of theneck. Alternatively, first the lethalblow to the neck, then as he lay dead a last derogatoryblow on the head. If we have some idea how he died, do we have any ideawhy he waskilled? Several reasons can be proposed: ritualsacrifice or judicialslaughter, combat, accident, or simple malicious murder- perhapsan Iron Age mugging.There is certainlynothing accidental about his injuries. The most attractive or at least most spectacularexplanation is ritual sacrificeor judicial slaughter;but if this were the case, then why was he just left partlysubmerged in a pool of waterrather than being buried, pegged down or perhaps even dismembered, as many Danish examples were? Furthermore,if humansacrifice or judicialslaughter was practisedin IronAge England,why is this chance findthe onlyvictim? If therewas sacrifice, why are bog bodies not found in associationwith every peatland habitationand why no more on LindowMoss? The 0.aK.Ctw, oemowe timene.. simpleevidence to my mindpoints to a chancewayside wAA#rv mw me),C death rather than a planned sacrifice or judicial slaughter,but I may be provedwrong. Of the two artefactson the body, the thin cord of twistedsinew knotted aroundhis neck has attracted ..the brutal clubbing of a much attention. Many suggestionshave been made man wearing a necklace.' about the significanceof this neck cord, in particular the proposalthat it was used as a garottein the course of a ritualmurder. If this wasits originalfunction then death would have resulted from obstructionof the carotidblood supplyto the brain, and the only post theories emerge but the discussion and argument as to mortemevidence that we might reasonablyexpect to who he was, how he died and what he was doing on see from such a process in Lindow Man would be Lindow Common could continue for another two and damageto one or more of the small cartilagesof the a half thousand years. throat. There is no such damage, but this does not exclude the possibility of garrotting. One thing is The excavation and initial conservation of Lindow Man was howevercertain, and that is thatthe extensive fractures performed under the direction of Mr. R.C. Turner, The in the cervicalvertebrae were not causedby the mere Cheshire County Archaeologist, Dr. Joan Taylor from the tighteningof this 2mm. diameterligature. Since the Dept. of Prehistoric Archaeology, Liverpool University, the ligatureis securelyknotted, withoutleaving the long Serious Crimes Squad from the Cheshire Constabulary, Dr. runningend which is seenon the noosearound the neck A.R. Williams, Consultant Pathologist at District of TollundMan, it wouldhave been necessary to tighten General Hospital, and Dr. Colin Shell. Acknowledgements for technical information quoted in this it by insertinga stickor somethingsimilar and twisting. account: Radiocarbon Dating - UKAE Establishment Harwell; Thereis no convincingevidence for this havingbeen Scanning electron microscopy and gut-content analysis - done:no compactdouble spiral, nor evidence of tension Institute of Archaeology, University of London; Statigraphic or stressaround the knot. The fact that it has in places and pollen analysis, Department of Geography, University of dug deeply into the neck is, I believe,due entirelyto Liverpool; Electron microprobe analysis - Department of bloatingof the body followingimmersion in the pool Metallurgy and Materials Science, University of Liverpool; with the resultthat the ligaturewas relativelytighter Neutron activation analysis - Joint Universities Research aroundthe soft bloatedneck than it had been in life: Reactor, Risley, Cheshire; CT scans - St. Bartholomew's which takes my interpretationback to the brutal Hospital, London; Xeroradiography- Rank Xerox, and Royal Marsden Hospital, London. clubbingof a manwearing a necklace.But once again, I may be wrong. Acknowledgement is made to the Department of Romano- Is therethen enough evidence to write'ritual sacrifice' British and Prehistoric Antiquities of the , into the anthropologyof IronAge Cheshire?My belief London, in whose custody Lindow Man is held. is we aremore likely witnesses after the crime of an Iron 1. Norbury, William, 1884. Lindow Common as a peat bog: Age muggingor death from combat.Whether he was its age and people. Transactionsof theLancashire and Cheshire fightingnaked or hisclothes have degraded without trace Antiquarian Society II, 60-75. is opento question.If, as is suggestedby his hair,nails 2. Stead, Ian and Turner, R.C. 1985. Lindow Man. andbodily habitus, he wasmore than a simplepeasant, Antiquity LIX, 25-75. thenperhaps his clotheswere worth taking either by his 3. Oldfield, F., Richardson, N., Yates, G. 1985. Lindow assailantor some other personor personsunknown; Man: Statigraphy and environment. Antiquity LIX, 27-8. 4. Connolly, R.C. 1985. Lindow Man: butabsence of preservedclothes does not confir Preliminary ritual. anatomical description. Antiquity LIX, 28-9. LindowMan - nicknamedin thepress Pete Bogg, alias 5. Schroter,R.C. 1985. Ancient Murder.New Scientist 1453, PeteMarsh - is yieldingup his secrets.Facts emerge and 52.