Osterby Man or the Osterby Head ( da, Østerbymanden) is a

bog body A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between and the Second World War. Fischer 199 ...

of which only the skull and hair survived. It was discovered in 1948 by

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 efficien ...

cutters to the southeast of Osterby, Germany. The hair is tied in a Suebian knot. The head is at the State Archaeological Museum at

Gottorf Castle Gottorf Castle (german: Schloss Gottorf, da, Gottorp Slot, Low German: ''Gottorp'') is a castle and estate in the city of Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is one of the most important secular buildings in Schleswig-Holstein, and ha ...

Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig (, , ; da, Slesvig; South Jutlandic: ''Sljasvig''; nds, Sleswig; archaic English: ''Sleswick'') is a town in the northeastern part of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is the capital of the '' Kreis'' (district) Schleswig-Flensburg. It ...

Discovery

The head was discovered on 26 May 1948 by Otto and Max Müller of Osterby, who were cutting peat on their father's land, at . It was found approximately beneath the current ground level. The head was wrapped in fragments of a deerskin cape, which Max Müller noticed protruding from the peat. The find was reported to the museum in Schleswig; despite intensive searching by the brothers and others, no more of the body has been found.

Description and analysis

The skull was wrapped in fragments of a deerskin cape and had been damaged by being struck with a blunt object before it was sunk in the bog.

Anthropology

The skull had been broken into several pieces. The acids in the bog have decalcified the bone, which has shrunk somewhat and is dark brown. The hair and small sections of scalp are well preserved, but the skin and other soft tissues of the face have disappeared. There is a large wound on the left side of the head, which may have been fatal: the skull had been depressed by a blow with a blunt object over an area approximately in diameter, and the bone of the left temple was shattered with splinters penetrating the brain area. Wijnand van der Sanden, tr. Susan J. Mellor, ''Through Nature to Eternity: The Bog Bodies of Northwest Europe'', Amsterdam: Batavian Lion, 1996, , p. 159. The skull had also been deformed by the weight of the peat above it, but the facial area was generally well preserved. Skeletal evidence suggests a man 50 to 60 years of age. Hack marks on the second

cervical vertebra In tetrapods, cervical vertebrae (singular: vertebra) are the vertebrae of the neck, immediately below the skull. Truncal vertebrae (divided into thoracic and lumbar vertebrae in mammals) lie caudal (toward the tail) of cervical vertebrae. In sau ...

show that the head was cut off. The skull was stabilised for exhibition by filling with

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

. The hair is thin and slightly wavy, long. It has been coloured a reddish brown by the acids in the bog; microscopic analysis showed that it had been dark blond and that the man had had some white hairs. In a re-examination in 2005, isotopic analysis showed that at least during his last year of life, the man ate meat remarkably rarely, and did not eat seafood.

Parasitological Parasitology is the study of parasites, their hosts, and the relationship between them. As a biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question but by their way of life. This means it f ...

analysis of the hair showed no

head lice The head louse (''Pediculus humanus capitis'') is an obligate ectoparasite of humans. Head lice are wingless insects that spend their entire lives on the human scalp and feeding exclusively on human blood. Humans are the only known hosts of thi ...

, unusual for the time. Osterby Man Suebian-Knot

Hairstyle

The hair is unusually well preserved and is tied above the right temple in a Suebian knot.

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his t ...

describes this in Chapter 38 of his ''

Germania Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north- ...

'' as a characteristic of free men among the Germanic tribe of

Suebi The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names ...

. The knot appears in several Roman depictions and on at least one other bog body,

Dätgen Man This is a list of bog bodies in order of country in which they were first discovered. Bog bodies, or bog people, are the naturally preserved corpses of humans and some animals recovered from peat bogs. The bodies have been most commonly found in ...

(who wore his on the back of his head). Osterby has featured the Suebian knot on its coat of arms since 1998.

Skin cape

The skull was wrapped in fragments of a garment, measuring approximately , consisting of tanned pieces of leather sewn together. Microscopic analysis suggested on the basis of the hairs that they were from

roe deer The roe deer (''Capreolus capreolus''), also known as the roe, western roe deer, or European roe, is a species of deer. The male of the species is sometimes referred to as a roebuck. The roe is a small deer, reddish and grey-brown, and well-adapt ...

. The neck opening was lined with a strip of leather about wide. All seams had been sewn with small stitches in

catgut Catgut (also known as gut) is a type of cord that is prepared from the natural fiber found in the walls of animal Gut (anatomy), intestines. Catgut makers usually use sheep or goat intestines, but occasionally use the intestines of cattle, Domest ...

. Some appeared to be repairs. Textile archaeologists identified the garment as a skin cape; similar cloaks or capes have been found with other archaeological finds, including

Elling Woman The Elling Woman is a bog body discovered in 1938 west of Silkeborg, Denmark. The Tollund Man was later discovered just c. away, twelve years after the Elling Woman's discovery. The Elling Woman was mistakenly described as a man in Peter Glob, P. ...

Haraldskær Woman The Haraldskær Woman (or Haraldskjaer Woman) is the name given to a bog body of a woman preserved in a bog in Jutland, Denmark, and dating from about 490 BC (pre-Roman Iron Age). Workers found the body in 1835 while excavating peat on the Harald ...

Dröbnitz Girl This is a list of bog bodies in order of country in which they were first discovered. Bog bodies, or bog people, are the naturally preserved corpses of humans and some animals recovered from peat bogs. The bodies have been most commonly found in ...

Kayhausen Boy The Kayhausen Boy is a mummy, naturally preserved in a sphagnum bog in Lower Saxony, Germany. He is one of the few recorded bog children discovered. Discovery and examination The body, of a boy believed to have been approximately seven to ten year ...

and Jührdenerfeld Man.

Treatment

Peter Löhr performed the anthropological analysis, which determined that the skull had shrunk while immersed in the bog. For his doctoral dissertation, he performed experiments on it involving repeated soaking and drying and detailed measurements; in his view, soaking caused it to swell to almost its original dimensions. Löhr's data included markedly shrunk teeth and the complete lower jaw associated with the skull, which has a protruding chin. However, more recent analysis has shown that in his original preparation of the skull for exhibition, Karl Schlabow added an unrelated lower jaw.

Dating

The Suebian knot indicates the man died in the Late

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 mostly appl ...

or the Roman period, and

radiocarbon dating 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 ...

likewise indicates a date between 75 and 130 CE; however, the hair sample used was taken from

Alfred Dieck Alfred Dieck (4 April 1906 in Schönebeck – 7 January 1989 in Bremen) was a German archaeologist internationally recognised for the scientific studies on bog bodies and bog finds. Since the early 1990s, the results of his scientific work have be ...

's private collection and may thus be unreliable.

Analysis

Other Iron Age bog bodies have also been beheaded; the body of Dätgen Man, who also had a Suebian knot, was found several metres from his head. The beheading together with the fractured skull indicates deliberate execution by multiple methods. It is impossible to determine whether Osterby Man was sunk in the bog as a judicial punishment or a sacrifice, or whether his body was also deposited in the bog; but it has been suggested that his relatively advanced age may indicate an honorable death.''Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society'' 69–70 (2003
p. 302