What? Reconstruction of the living environment of Bog body Drenthe the Yde Girl in the raised bog of Drenthe. Why? There was a time when more than half of the Netherlands was covered in raised bogs. At most, five per cent of that remains today. Researchers are examining how these raised bogs were used for centuries and how we can conserve the last of the raised bogs, an important part of the country’s heritage. Who? Roy van Beek, Wageningen University & Cold case solved Research in collaboration with the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University and the ADC, an archaeological research and cultural heritage centre. Where? The vicinity of Yde in North Drenthe. Result? after 2,000 years The Yde Girl was probably killed close to her A cadaver with a half-shaved head, strangled and She was barely sixteen in 1897 was about sixty meters in diameter and home near a bog about sixty metres in dumped in a pond. Presumably the Yde Girl, the when she was strangled no more than a metre or two deep. When the diameter and no more than a metre or two deep. She was probably tried for a crime or Netherlands’ most famous bog body, was killed by her and thrown into a pond. land was reparcelled in the 20th century, it shif- offered as a sacrifice to the gods. own fellow villagers. These are the findings of a new Two thousand years later the ted and filled with sand, but this area is still visi- environmental analysis of the scene of the crime, Yde Girl was found again. The bly damp in the fields. An analysis of the ancient more than 2,000 years after the deed was committed. girl, who was approximately pollens in the soil has revealed that the bog was TEXT: MARION DE BOO IMAGE: DRENTS MUSEUM 1.40 metres tall, was wearing a surrounded by spots of fairly open deciduous fo- worn-out woollen cape, had a braided, woollen rest with oak, beech, hornbeam and linden, in- strangulation band around her neck and a stab terspersed with heath and grassland, raised wound near her left collarbone. Half of her long, bogs and streams. reddish-blond hair had been shaved off. Wage- ningen archaeologist and raised bog expert Roy Diverse landscape van Beek and his colleagues reconstructed the The closest farm could not have been more than Yde Girl’s living environment and suspects that a kilometre from the site. Every couple of kilome- the perpetrators were people from her own villa- tres, there were small hamlets in the landscape ge. with no more than twenty to thirty inhabitants. There were burial grounds near most villages. On Close to home the higher sand ridges were networks of fields Contrary to what you may expect, the murder separated by earthen walls (referred to as Celtic didn’t take place in a vast, inhospitable, remote fields). Cows and sheep grazed in the damp peat bog marsh, where the spirits of wise women stream valleys. Three enclosed ‘strongholds’ roam in the mist at ungodly hours. In fact, it pro- were also found around the site, but they’re so bably happened close to home, about a kilome- small that their purpose is more likely to have tre away, in a half-open cultural landscape that been spiritual than military. ‘We weren’t able to the then inhabitants had already tamed and put identify any differences in status at the houses to intensive use. ‘Members of the public were and the burial sites,’ says Van Beek. ‘Presumably probably present, but not many, because there this concerned an egalitarian society. There was simply wasn’t enough room in this place,’ conclu- probably some cooperation between the villa- des Van Beek. ges, because it must have taken great effort to build all those Celtic fields and other fortificati- Broader picture ons.’ Hundreds of bog bodies have been found in nor- thwestern Europe, usually during peat extrac- Sacrifice to the gods The bog body of the Yde Girl tion, 48 of which were discovered in the Nether- So the key question remains: Why was the Yde as it was found by two peat cutters in 1897. Researcher lands. Some were given a posthumous burial Girl killed. ‘We still don’t know for certain,’ says Roy van Beek became after being discovered and some simply vanis- Van Beek. ‘Presumably the decision was made at fascinated by these kinds of hed. Others are now on exhibition at the Drents the local level, by several villages in unison. She finds at a young age. ‘I Museum in Assen. ‘You could fill your bookcase may have been tried for adultery or another cri- already wanted to be an with works about bog bodies,’ says Van Beek. me. Or perhaps she was a sacrifice to the gods, archaeologist as a small boy in Salland,’ says Van Beek, ‘They describe their clothing, their diseases, their which was most common in times of unrest, war now an expert in raised bogs. last suppers, the ritual artefacts that were found and disease. The one doesn’t preclude the other, ‘I was always looking for with them in the marshes. But no one has ever by the way, because criminals were sometimes fragments. When I was about painted a broader picture. How did these people offered to the gods as well and thrown into the fourteen, there was a live, what kind of a society was it? A good land- bog after being killed.’ It’s striking that there are fantastic European exhibition about bog bodies scape analysis can provide answers to some of no other known archaeological finds from this in the Drents Museum in these questions.’ bog. Nor can we say with any certainty that the Assen. They’re so appealing Yde Girl really did live in the Yde area. ‘Prehistoric because the acidic peat Peat cutters people were more mobile than was previously preserves them so well. Van Beek and his colleagues’ reconstruction re- thought. For example, it turns out that an archer People from thousands of years ago! I was completely veals that the bog in Drenthe where two peat found near Stonehenge was actually from the fascinated. My parents cutters, to their dismay, discovered the Yde Girl Alps,’ says Van Beek. thought it was a bit strange.’ Research on the care that vulnerable elderly people need led to the Attaching transmitters to great knots has resulted establishment of WijkKliniek (‘Neighbourhood Clinic’) with 24 beds. Elderly in the discovery of 25 new foraging areas of these 24 people with acute medical problems can go there for help 24/7. www.nwo.nl/24 birds in Southeast Asia alone. www.nwo.nl/25 25.