Why Do Bog Bodies?
Introduction
Bog bodies have been found in many locations in northwestern Europe: Ireland, England, Germany, and Denmark. Generally, these countries have poor preservation conditions, but the bogs are an exception to the rule. Most bodies found show severe trauma from a violent death. The scope of the article encompasses Europe during the Iron and Bronze periods. It is difficult, frequently impossible to distinguish between ritual behavior towards bodies after death and outright sacrificial killing. Why were the bodies interred in these locations? Were they brutal murders? Ruthless executions of criminals? Perhaps merciless sacrifices. From a modern prospective there is an immense difference between inanimate and human offerings, but this …show more content…
However, they were also put into bogs, so the reasons behind the different types of executions, as recorded by Tacitus, don’t exactly explain why they were both hung and interred in a bog. If a hanging were a way to create a public example, why would the body then be hidden immediately? Why not just leave it out for people to see? Tacitus also records that one of several punishments for adulterous women was to have their hair shaved off.
Because of its reliance on records, the punishment hypothesis has some serious flaws. For example, as helpful as written records can be, at times they can also lead research in a wrong direction, because there is a worldview with a bias behind the words, which cannot always be perceived at the first reading. The Roman accounts project Roman culture onto the practices of an entirely different society, so we are left with a partially true, partially made up record. This is a crucial flaw in the concepts behind the punishment hypothesis. Also, Tacitus’ document was written a while after the Iron Age, so practices and ideologies could have …show more content…
As the hypothesis most widely accepted by archaeologists of the present, this explanation is based mainly on the archaeological evidence from the bog bodies themselves and from other sites in Iron Age Europe. In contrast to the punishment hypothesis' assertion that the violence indicates that the bog bodies had been socially despised individuals, class discussion suggests that the violence is evidence that they were sacrifices.
In my opinion, the hypothesis that the bog bodies are ritual sacrifices is the stronger of the two explanations. It is based on the material evidence and what is known of the culture from their own objects and accounts, while the other hypothesis is based on a biased narrative of the Celtic and Germanic tribes’ practices. However, many questions remain and there is still much to be learned about these bodies, so theories will probably change over time and new ones will spring up as young archaeologists join the ranks of researchers studying these intriguing individuals. As our archaeological methods improve, we will be able to learn more about the bodies that have already been exhumed, as well as those that have yet to be
Bog bodies have been found in many locations in northwestern Europe: Ireland, England, Germany, and Denmark. Generally, these countries have poor preservation conditions, but the bogs are an exception to the rule. Most bodies found show severe trauma from a violent death. The scope of the article encompasses Europe during the Iron and Bronze periods. It is difficult, frequently impossible to distinguish between ritual behavior towards bodies after death and outright sacrificial killing. Why were the bodies interred in these locations? Were they brutal murders? Ruthless executions of criminals? Perhaps merciless sacrifices. From a modern prospective there is an immense difference between inanimate and human offerings, but this …show more content…
However, they were also put into bogs, so the reasons behind the different types of executions, as recorded by Tacitus, don’t exactly explain why they were both hung and interred in a bog. If a hanging were a way to create a public example, why would the body then be hidden immediately? Why not just leave it out for people to see? Tacitus also records that one of several punishments for adulterous women was to have their hair shaved off.
Because of its reliance on records, the punishment hypothesis has some serious flaws. For example, as helpful as written records can be, at times they can also lead research in a wrong direction, because there is a worldview with a bias behind the words, which cannot always be perceived at the first reading. The Roman accounts project Roman culture onto the practices of an entirely different society, so we are left with a partially true, partially made up record. This is a crucial flaw in the concepts behind the punishment hypothesis. Also, Tacitus’ document was written a while after the Iron Age, so practices and ideologies could have …show more content…
As the hypothesis most widely accepted by archaeologists of the present, this explanation is based mainly on the archaeological evidence from the bog bodies themselves and from other sites in Iron Age Europe. In contrast to the punishment hypothesis' assertion that the violence indicates that the bog bodies had been socially despised individuals, class discussion suggests that the violence is evidence that they were sacrifices.
In my opinion, the hypothesis that the bog bodies are ritual sacrifices is the stronger of the two explanations. It is based on the material evidence and what is known of the culture from their own objects and accounts, while the other hypothesis is based on a biased narrative of the Celtic and Germanic tribes’ practices. However, many questions remain and there is still much to be learned about these bodies, so theories will probably change over time and new ones will spring up as young archaeologists join the ranks of researchers studying these intriguing individuals. As our archaeological methods improve, we will be able to learn more about the bodies that have already been exhumed, as well as those that have yet to be