July 28, 2026
Excerpt: The Bog Bodies -- sec. 2: Sometimes a Garrote is Just a Garrote
Post on patreon for patrons only for 6 months: We tackle the deepest mystery surrounding the ancient bog bodies: why were people ritually killed and deposited in bogs for millennia? Were they targets of murder, execution, or sacrifice? We analyze the long and tense debate over Britain’s most famous bog body, Lindow Man, who met a brutal end in a bog in Northwest England in the 1st century AD, and in so doing, we refute the accident and criminal-murder (or “Iron-Age mugging”) theories. We carefully dissect the notion of the “threefold death,” which purports to link bog bodies like Lindow Man to ancient Celtic gods and myths. Finally, we explore the more difficult and nuanced question of whether bog killings were primarily executions or sacrifices, weighing evidences ranging from preserved last meals to manicured nails to Julius Caesar’s macabre account of the “Wicker Man” sacrifice in ancient Gaul. Finally, we return to Lindow Moss, and consider the possibility that Lindow Man’s death was a desperate wartime measure to combat the Roman advance.
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Image: English schoolchildren singing with “Lindow Man” t-shirts, with image of putative facial reconstruction of the bog body, from video for “Lindow Man, We Want You Back Again,” 1987 (video link below)
Video of song, “Lindow Man, We Want You Back Again,” by Lindow Primary School, 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aguYZH2_oxg
SOURCES:
Books:
-Miranda Aldhouse-Green, “Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery”;
-Ross & Robbins, “The Life and Death of a Druid Prince: The Story of Lindow Man, an Archaeological Sensation”;
-Karin Sanders, “Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination”;
-Stead, Bourke, & Brothwell, eds., “Lindow Man: the Body in the Bog”;
-Melanie Giles, “Bog Bodies: Face to Face with the Past”;
-Peter Glob, “The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved”
MA Theses:
-Solen Ruffy, “The Violent Deaths of Kings and Priests in Ireland and Britain: Case Study of the Iron Age Bog Mummies,” etc., U. of Western Brittany, 2023, https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-04560083v1/file/Memoire-2023-LCCC-RUFFY_Solen.pdf
-Lydia Stewart, “Bog Bodies: Archaeological Narratives and Modern Identity,” Victoria University of Wellington, 2020
Articles:
-Van Beek, et al, “Bogs, bones and bodies: the deposition of human remains in northern European mires,” Antiquity, Jan. 2023;
-R.C. Connolly, “Lindow Man: Britain’s Prehistoric Bog Body,” Anthropology Today, Oct. 1985;
-Dalya Alberge, “Lindow Man ‘was a simple murder victim,” The Times, March 22, 2004;
-Ronald Hutton, “What Did Happen to Lindow Man?”, Worthing Archaeological Society Journal, spring 2004
-CS Briggs, “Did They Fall or Were They Pushed? Some Unresolved Questions about Bog Bodies,” in Turner & Scaife, eds., “Bog Bodies: New Discoveries and New Perspectives,” 1995
Lecture:
-Ronald Hutton, “Gods of Prehistoric Britain,” 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjC0lGr4h04
Podcast Series:
-“The Discovery Series: The Bog Bodies,” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-discovery-series-the-bog-bodies/id1852306442
