![Lindow Man 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Lindow_Man_1.jpg)
Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved
bog body of a man discovered in a peat
bog at
Lindow Moss near
Wilmslow
Wilmslow ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England, south of Manchester city centre. The population was 24,497 at the 2011 Census.
History
Toponymy
Wilmslow derives its name from Old ...
in
Cheshire,
North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial
peat
Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficient ...
cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss;
Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered.
The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s"
and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
or
Romano-British
The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...
period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
The recovered body has been preserved by
freeze-drying and is on permanent display at the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, although it occasionally travels to other venues such as the
Manchester Museum
Manchester Museum is a museum displaying works of archaeology, anthropology and natural history and is owned by the University of Manchester, in England. Sited on Oxford Road ( A34) at the heart of the university's group of neo-Gothic buildings, ...
.
Background
Lindow Moss
Lindow Moss is a peat bog in Lindow, an area of Wilmslow, Cheshire, which has been used as
common land
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person who has a ...
since the
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
period. It formed after the
last ice age, one of many such peat bogs in north-east Cheshire and the
Mersey basin that formed in hollows caused by melting ice. Investigations have not yet discovered settlement or agricultural activity around the edge of Lindow Moss that would have been contemporary with Lindow Man; however, analysis of pollen in the peat suggests there was some cultivation in the vicinity.
Once covering over , the bog has now shrunk to a tenth of its original size. It is a dangerous place; an 18th-century writer recorded people drowning there. For centuries the peat from the bog was used as fuel, and it continued to be extracted until the 1980s, by which time the process had been mechanised.
Lindow Moss is a
lowland raised mire; this type of peat bog often produces the best preserved bog bodies, allowing more detailed analysis. Lowland raised mires occur mainly in northern England and extend south to the Midlands. Lindow Man is one of 27 bodies to be recovered from such areas.
Preservation of bog bodies
The preservation of bog bodies is dependent on a set of specific physical conditions, which can occur in peat bogs. A sphagnum moss bog must have a temperature lower than 4 °C at the time of deposition of the body. The subsequent average annual temperature must be lower than 10 °C. Moisture must be stable in the bog year-round: it cannot dry out.
Sphagnum moss affects the chemistry of nearby water, which becomes highly acidic (a
pH of roughly 3.3 to 4.5) relative to a more ordinary environment. The concentration of dissolved minerals also tends to be low. Dying moss forms layers of sediment and releases sugars and humic acids which consume oxygen. Since the surface of the water is covered by living moss, water becomes anaerobic. As a result, human tissues buried in the bog tend to tan rather than decay.
Lindow Woman
On 13 May 1983, two peat workers at Lindow Moss, Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley, noticed an unusual object—about the size of a football—on the elevator taking peat to the shredding machine. They removed the object for closer inspection, joking that it was a dinosaur egg. Once the peat had been removed, their discovery turned out to be a decomposing, incomplete human head with one eye and some hair intact.
Forensics identified the skull as belonging to a European woman, probably aged 30–50.
Police initially thought the skull was that of Malika Reyn-Bardt, who had disappeared in 1960 and was the subject of an ongoing investigation.
While in prison on another charge, her husband, Peter Reyn-Bardt, had boasted that he had killed his wife and buried her in the back garden of their bungalow, which was on the edge of the area of mossland where peat was being dug. The garden had been examined but no body was found. When Reyn-Bardt was confronted with the discovery of the skull from Lindow Moss, he confessed to the murder of his wife.
The skull was later
radiocarbon dated
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
, revealing it to be nearly 2,000 years old. "Lindow Woman", as it became known, dated from around 210 AD.
This emerged shortly before Reyn-Bardt went to trial, but he was convicted on the evidence of his confession.
Discovery
A year later, a further discovery was made at Lindow Moss, just south-west of the Lindow Woman. On 1 August 1984, Andy Mould, who had been involved in the discovery of Lindow Woman, took what he thought was a piece of wood off the elevator of the peat-shredding machine. He threw the object at Eddie Slack, his workmate. When it hit the ground, peat fell off the object and revealed it to be a human foot. The police were called and the foot was taken away for examination.
Rick Turner, the Cheshire
County Archaeologist
A county archaeologist is a local government employee in the United Kingdom, responsible for overseeing development-led archaeological investigations as required by PPG16. Nominated as the archaeological advisor by each local planning authority, ...
, was notified of the discovery and succeeded in finding the rest of the body,
which later became known as Lindow Man. Some skin had been exposed and had started to decay, so to prevent further deterioration of the body, it was re-covered with peat. The complete excavation of the block containing the remains was performed on 6 August. Until it could be dated, it was moved to the
Macclesfield District General Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency ...
for storage.
As the body of Malika Reyn-Bardt had still not been found, it was initially thought possible the body might be hers, until it was determined to be male, and radiocarbon dated.
The owners of the land where Lindow Man was found donated the body to the British Museum, and on 21 August it was transported to London.
At the time, the body was dubbed "Pete Marsh" by
Middlesex Hospital
Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London, England. First opened as the Middlesex Infirmary in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally clos ...
radiologists, a name subsequently adopted by local journalists, as was the similar "Pete Bogg".
The find was announced to the press during the second week of investigation.
As the best preserved bog body found in Britain, its discovery caused a domestic media sensation and received global coverage. Sparking excitement in the country's archaeological community, who had long expected such a find, it was hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 1980s.
A
''Q.E.D.'' documentary about Lindow Man broadcast by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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in 1985 attracted 10 million viewers.
Lindow Man's official name is Lindow II, as there are other finds from the area: Lindow I (Lindow Woman) refers to a human skull, Lindow III to a "fragmented headless body", and Lindow IV to the upper thigh of an adult male, possibly that of Lindow Man.
After the discovery of Lindow Man, there were no further archaeological excavations at Lindow Moss until 1987. A large piece of skin was found by workmen on the elevator on 6 February 1987. On this occasion, the police left the investigation to the archaeologists. Over 70 pieces were found, constituting Lindow III. Although the bone was not as well preserved as that of Lindow Man, the other tissues survived in better condition. The final discovery was that of Lindow IV on 14 June 1988. Part of a left leg and buttocks were found on the elevator, from a site just west of where Lindow Man was found. Nearly three months later, on 12 September, a right thigh was discovered in the peat on the bucket of a digger. The proximity of the discovery sites, coupled with the fact that the remains were shown to come from an adult male, means that Lindow IV is probably part of Lindow Man.
Lindow Man marked the first discovery in Britain of a well-preserved bog body; its condition was comparable to that of
. Before Lindow Man was found, it was estimated that 41 bog bodies had been found in England and Wales and 15 in Scotland. Encouraged by the discovery of Lindow Man, a gazetteer was compiled, which revealed a far higher number of bog bodies: over 85 in England and Wales and over 36 in Scotland. Prior to the discovery of the bodies in Lindow Moss, British bog bodies had been a relatively neglected subject compared to European examples. The interest caused by Lindow Man led to more in-depth research of accounts of discoveries in bogs since the 17th century; by 1995, the numbers had changed to 106 in England and Wales and 34 in Scotland. The remains covered a large time frame.
In life, Lindow Man would have measured between 5'6" and 5'8" (1.68 and 1.73 m) tall and weighed about . It was possible to ascertain that his age at death was around the mid-20s. The body retains a trimmed beard, moustache, and sideburns of brown hair, as well as healthy teeth with no visible cavities, and manicured fingernails, indicating he did little heavy or rough work. Apart from a fox-fur armband, Lindow Man was discovered completely naked.
. As a result of decalcification of the bones and pressure from the peat under which Lindow Man was buried, his skull was distorted. While some preserved human remains may contain DNA, peat bogs such as Lindow Moss are generally poor for such a purpose, and it is unlikely that DNA could be recovered from Lindow Man.
Lindow Man and Lindow III were found to have elevated levels of copper on their skin. The cause for this was uncertain as there could have been natural causes, although a study by Pyatt ''et al.'' proposed that the bodies may have been painted with a copper-based pigment. To test this, skin samples were taken from places likely to be painted and tested against samples from areas where painting was unlikely. It was found that the copper content of the skin of the torso was higher than the control areas, suggesting that the theory of Pyatt ''et al.'' may have been correct. However, the conclusion was ambiguous as the overall content was above that expected of a male, and variations across the body may have been due to environmental factors. Similarly, green deposits were found in the hair, originally thought to be a copper-based pigment used for decoration, but it was later found to be the result of a reaction between the
in the hair and the acid of the peat bog.
Dating Lindow Man is problematic as samples from the body and surrounding peat have produced dates spanning a 900-year period. Although the peat encasing Lindow Man has been
to about 300 BC, Lindow Man himself has a different date. Early tests at different laboratories returned conflicting dates for the body; later tests suggested a date between 2 BC and 119 AD.
period rather than Roman due to the interpretation that Lindow Man's death may have been a ritual sacrifice or execution.
Explanations for why the peat in which he was found is much older have been sought. Archaeologist P. C. Buckland suggests that as the stratigraphy of the peat appears undisturbed, Lindow Man may have been deposited into a pool that was already some 300 years old. Geographer K. E. Barber has argued against this hypothesis, saying that pools at Lindow Moss would have been too shallow, and suggests that the peat may have been peeled back to allow the burial and then replaced, leaving the stratigraphy apparently undisturbed.
Lindow Man's last meal was preserved in his stomach and intestines and was analysed in some detail. It was hoped that investigations into the contents of the stomach would shed light on the contemporary diet, as was the case with Grauballe Man and Tollund Man in the 1950s. The analysis of the contents of the digestive system of bog bodies had become one of the principal endeavours of investigating such remains. Analysis of the grains present revealed his diet to be mostly of
s. He probably ate slightly charred bread, although the burning may have had ritual significance rather than being an accident. Some
pollen was also found in the stomach, indicating that Lindow Man died in March or April.