So, when Bord na Mona turf-cutters came across a body in the bog near Kinnegad last Friday, I was delighted. Proper archaeology! Imagine finding something like that after breakfast. The body is now safely deposited in the National Museum where it will be examined further by experts. They should be able to establish the sex, the age and the cause of death of the body. They will probably be able to establish what the person had to eat and other interesting things about the life that it had before it ended up in the bog near Kinnegad.
The evidence is pointing towards the fact that this is a bog body. If it was a modern body, it would usually have synthetic materials such as polyester or jewellery and they would have survived with the body. Prehistoric people did not have access to jeans or tracksuits. Bog bodies are prehistoric burials that are widespread across Northern Europe and which appear to have been deliberately placed in watery conditions. However, the bodies do not decompose as they would normally. The acidic oxygen-free conditions in bogs are perfect for preserving human remains. The skin, hair and even stomach remains can be preserved, although bones tend to turn to goo after a while. While the dry conditions of the deserts kept the pharoahs intact and the ice of the Alps preserved Otzi the Iceman, in Ireland we have the bogs, and underneath them is a whole world of archaeology just waiting to be found. This bog has already been the site of numerous material remains, mostly trackways, but this is the first bog body found here. It is not the first time the Boyne Valley has been the resting place for a bog body though. Another one was found in 2003 and it too is up in the National Museum. He had a natty mowhawk hairdo which he liked to spike with pine resin. Not just ordinary pine resin, but the resin from a particular pine which only grows along the borders of Spain and France. Fancy.
But first let's talk about the bogs because they are crucial to the story. They are strange places, even to those of us who spend summers there. Raised bogs are a result of sudden and severe climate change. After the Ice Age, melted ice gathered in lakes in the interior of Ireland because of it's saucer shape. Plants and trees lived and died on the edge of these lakes. Then, sometime around the Bronze Age there was a major environmental change in Europe. It got wetter, and Ireland got wetter than most. We know this from environmental records in the bog. The trees started to disappear from the pollen record and the peat (dead trees) starts to pile up.
The question is, was it the importation of bronze which led to the cutting down of the trees? These new blades were perfect for chopping trees. Why the need for chopping down all the lovely trees? Well, the change in climate had already covered the uplands in blanket bog. It was useless for farming now. People needed land. People were under pressure to put food on the table, and across Europe, the old empires were falling. Bronze was also useful for something else - weapons which were specially designed to kill people instead of work. So, the bog bodies may have been connected with all this violence.
This is also the period when we start to see water deposits, in rivers, lakes and bogs. Some cultures deposit their wealth for safe-keeping during times of stress. Some do it to appease the gods. Some even do it to mark different territories between opposing groups. These deposits could be goods, or people.
There was also a change when iron was introduced. It appears that societies got even more violent now that they could make stronger swords and spears. The Iron Age in Ireland was always considered a period of huge displacement. There was very little settlement activity, although the excavations during the boom years are changing that picture. It did seem as if the whole country was on the move. The legends talk of invasions, kings, druids and warriors. This is the period that we find the majority of the bog bodies in Europe. The Roman senator, Tacitus, mentions that the Germanic people had a terribe habit of pinning their social outcasts down into bogs with wooden spikes. There is also the strange pattern with bog bodies being mutilated in some fashion. This happens in a lot of cases and we don't know if it happened before or after death.
So, there is lots of violence, catastrophic climate changes and bodies in the bogs. We also have the trackways. These are the wooden structures which were found near this body in Kinnegad bog. Trackways were another Iron Age feature in Northern Europe. Corlea Trackway in longford is the largest Irish example and it was built in 148 BC. They were wooden roads which led into watery landscapes. Only they did not seem to be designed for everyday transport. Trackways appear to be special constructions, used rarely and for purposes which we do not know. Perhaps they were used for a last journey.
All this, without a passage mound in sight.
Credits
http://www.heritagecouncil.ie/fileadmin/user_upload/INSTAR_Database/Climate_Change_and_Human_Activity_in_Wetlands_of_Ireland_Progress_Report_08.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/human_sacrifice_01.shtml
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