Friday 12 August 2011

'Late prehistoric' bog body found in Laois bog

Thought to be the body of a woman, with some interesting details about the deposition of the body:

The body is estimated to be over 2,000 years old. It appears the torso and head, which were in a leather bag, did not survive. The legs, however, were not enclosed by the bag and were preserved by chemicals in the peat.
Found in the Cul na Móna bog between Abbeyleix and Portlaoise, it was discovered by an employee operating a milling machine on Wednesday evening.


2 comments:

Blackbird said...

I'll tell you, these archaeology writes are frustrating. The one I read was so vague. It's basically "we found another bog body. Only the bottom half has been decently preserved. From this we can conclude that *possibly* a female was ritualistically killed and throw into a bog a few thousand years ago."

Here is a local news story from here in Arizona. "Police found a buried body today. Don't know when it was buried, why it was buried or even the gender of the remains. All we can tell you is that it's *possibly* a homicide and the bones are not that of a child's."

Yea...it's all conjecture and even the "female" part is at this point. Since there is a 50/50 chance that doesn't tell us a whole lot. The bit about "ritual sacrifice" never fails to irk my nerves because they have no proof of that. Some psycho could have killed a woman then buried the body. Psychos still do that today.

Seren said...

Yeah, if you look back at how people were hung, drawn and quartered and heads were stuck on spikes in the good ole days, I bet archaeologists would jump to a few conclusions if they didn't know the context or the reasons.

Human sacrifice is almost a way of dismissing these things, it's a bit of a bugbear of mine as well.

With that said, things like leg bones can help identify whether a body is male or female - it's not conclusive, though. They may have looked at the bones/proportions, or else they may have made assumptions from items associated with the body. But yeah, it's all frustratingly vague.