Kayhausen boy

Calfskin cape

The boy from Kayhausen is a male bog corpse from the 4th to 1st century BC from the Kayhauser Moor near the village of Kayhausen near Bad Zwischenahn in the Ammerland district in Lower Saxony .

The bog body is kept in the State Museum for Nature and Humans in Oldenburg, under inventory number OL 5935, the fur cape and further information about the find of the boy from Kayhausen can be found in the permanent exhibition.

Discovery

Kayhausen boy

The top 50–60 cm thick layer of peat at the site of the find was already removed using the bog burn method. On July 3, 1922, while working in the Kayhausener Moor , the peat cutter Roggemann came across a lower leg bone and pieces of a fur cloak of the boy lying on his back about 120 cm below the surface. He completely exposed the body and informed the shop steward of the Sandstede Museum in Bad Zwischenahn, who passed the message on to J. Martin, the director of the State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory in Oldenburg . Martin arrived the following day and examined and photographed the body and the site. When the body was exposed, both hands that were still stuck in the peat were torn off and could only be recovered in individual bones. At Martin's request, Roggemann brought the body to Bad Zwischenahn on a wheelbarrow, where he temporarily stored it for a few days in an adjoining room of the Spieker inn until it was finally transported to the museum. On the way to the inn, Roggemann described the exact location of the find to several people who had found out about the find, but without revealing to them that he was carrying the bog body he was looking for with him on his wheelbarrow. While the corpse was stored in the adjoining room of the restaurant, numerous onlookers came and took individual bones and fingernails of the corpse as souvenirs . After arriving at the museum in Oldenburg, the body was examined by a doctor and the woolen fabric found by a textile specialist, whose reports no longer exist. Location: 53 ° 9 '45 "  N , 8 ° 2' 31.2"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 9 '45 "  N , 8 ° 2' 31.2"  E

description

When found, the body's skin was almost white. On the front, however, it turned dark brown because the corpse had been exposed to the air and sun for several days and had already dried out. On the back it kept its light gray color. The boy was tied with a complicated device made of two twisted strips of wool. Both forearms were tied behind the back and the loose strips were fastened around the neck with a coarse woolen material that was twisted into a cord and patched several times. A second long, folded-up piece of a finer woolen material was knotted at the neck, passed over the tied arms through the crotch between the legs to the front, and knotted again at the neck. However, this lacing tore when the corpse was recovered, both in the front and in the back near the neck. Next to the corpse was another twisted loop made of fine wool. All woolen fabrics were plain weave and are believed to have come from the boy's clothes. The feet were a cloak of calfskin tied together. There are several surviving comparative finds for this cloak, such as those of the wife of Elling , the girl of Dröbnitz , the wife of Haraldskær or the man from Jürdenerfeld . These straps were only attached after the boy's death and were probably used to carry the body. The corpse is compressed to 5 to 8 cm due to the decalcified bones and the pressure in the bog. The muscle and fat tissue is completely broken down, the connective tissue of the skin shell, on the other hand, is completely preserved, appears somewhat swollen, with clearly visible pores. When found, the bones were soft and pliable, but retained their original shape and darkened. The boy's hair is mostly colored red due to the bog, only in a few places without the bog was it retained its dark blonde color. The hair is about 45 mm long on the head, whereas it is cut in the nape and is significantly shorter. The skull shows no fractures, the bones are softened and badly deformed. The face is missing, both ears were lost during the rescue. The tooth holes are clearly visible in the upper jaw, the teeth as well as the fingernails were lost during and after the rescue. Only one molar could be recovered from the site. The skeleton as well as the skull of the corpse are partly gone and flattened by the storage in the moor. The entire skin, as well as the face and head, are completely deformed and unrecognizable. The toenails and fingernails originally preserved and only slightly changed were lost until they arrived at the museum.

Findings

The boy was sprawled on his back. It was sunk in the moor without a pit being dug. The child's remains were examined several times at longer intervals.

In 1922 a medical examination showed that it was a boy whose skin was as soft as fine leather. The doctor discovered three parallel puncture sites in the neck area and concluded that the boy had been violently killed. It was followed by the preservation of the body with a mixture of formaldehyde , glycerin and water. Some isolated spinal bones were dried and stored separately. The right humerus was broken and the ends pierced the skin. This injury must have occurred shortly before or during the sinking of the boy in the bog. The boy's abdominal area has a major injury. It was probably caused by a stick that was used to hold the corpse under the surface of the moor or by a burst of the stomach and abdominal wall as a result of fouling gases. All of the viscera lay very flat in the boy's body.

A second examination was carried out in 1952, which confirmed the sex and cause of death. In the intestines that were preserved, two apple pits were found in the stomach, from which conclusions could be drawn about the last meal and the time of death in autumn or winter. Parts of the skin were removed from the corpse for testing purposes and stored separately. This examination also confirmed that the condition of the corpse had not changed noticeably since it was wet-preserved in 1922. An X-ray examination showed a pathological change in the geometry of the right femoral head, which must have been associated with a stiffening of the hip joint and thus considerable functional restriction when walking. This joint had survived inflammatory suppuration, which had healed by the time the boy died.

In 1996 the last examination for the time being was carried out by archaeologists , coroners and a dentist . The current findings were documented by magnetic resonance imaging . A computed tomography did not provide any meaningful results due to the decalcified bones. The woolen tie was loosened, and the boy's neck showed three closely spaced knife punctures, two under his left ear and one in the front of his neck. The boy had been taught the stitches before he was handcuffed, because the puncture sites were covered by intact wool. Another 4 cm long stab wound is located on the inside of the left upper arm . The boy received this stab from the front with his arm raised. The examination of the intestines revealed a further seven apple pits and numerous seeds of the dock knotweed ( Polygonum lapathifolium ). X-rays showed clear Harris lines on the left shin , which indicate recurrent growth disorders due to malnutrition or illness. The sex of the corpse could no longer be confirmed with certainty, since the genitals are no longer preserved due to the long storage.

The boy's age was estimated to be a maximum of seven and a half years based on a preserved molar from the deciduous dentition. His height is limited to about 1.20 to 1.35 m during his lifetime. The motivation for killing the boy can no longer be reconstructed today.

Isotope analyzes

The findings of an X-ray fluorescence spectroscopic examination of metal isotopes in teeth and bones to narrow down the boy's geographical origin showed that the preservation fluid in which the boy's corpse was kept for decades washed out numerous isotopes from the bones. This makes it difficult to use these isotope patterns for a geochemical classification. In contrast, the dry-prepared bones from the spine had significantly higher isotope values. The evaluation of the strontium isotope analysis on the dry specimens in comparison with the geochemical data of the region around the site of discovery showed that the boy most likely grew up in the vicinity of the site of discovery. The dry preparations, on the other hand, showed unusually high lead and zinc isotope values, the cause of which cannot be explained with certainty. It is possible that these specimens were kept in a metal container for a long time after they were recovered while still moist, which caused the metal ions to enter.

Dating

A pollen-analytical determination carried out in the 1950s revealed a time of death in the Roman Iron Age , around the 1st or 2nd century AD. ¹⁴ C tests on one hair, two bones and two textile samples enabled him to reach the 4th to 1st centuries AD Century BC To be dated. A more precise delimitation of the dating was technically not possible due to the condition of the samples. In addition, a textile sample turned out to be recent (modern) material, which presumably came from the improper handling of the corpse after it was found.

interpretation

The reason for the killing of the boy cannot be determined from the results available so far. It remains open whether he was a victim of a crime or died in a fight, whether he was executed or sacrificed.

literature

• State Museum for Nature and Man (ed.): Museum journal Nature and Man: Natural history, cultural studies, museum studies . No. 6 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  1862-9083 (focus on current research results of the remains of the boy from Kayhausen, pages 15–157).
• Peter Pieper u. a .: Bog corpses . In: Mamoun Fansa (ed.): Neither lake nor land. Bog - a lost landscape . Oldenburg 1999, ISBN 3-89598-591-0 .
• Wijnand van der Sanden : Mummies from the moor. The prehistoric and protohistoric bog bodies from northwestern Europe . Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam 1996, ISBN 90-6707-416-0 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
• Hajo Hayen : The bog bodies in the museum on the dam . In: Publications of the State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory Oldenburg . tape 6 . Isensee, Oldenburg 1987, ISBN 3-920557-73-5 , p. 27-35 .
• Hajo Hayen : The boy's moor body from the Kayhausen moor . In: Oldenburger Landesverein für Geschichte, Natur- und Heimatkunde eV (Hrsg.): Oldenburger Jahrbuch . tape 63 , 1964, ISSN  0340-4447 , p. 19-42 .
• J. Martin: Contributions to bog corpse research: The bog corpse find of Kayhausen near Zwischenahn in Oldenburg . In: Gustaf Kossinna (Hrsg.): Mannus magazine for prehistory . No. 16 . Kabizsch, 1924, ISSN  0025-2360 , p. 240-248 (first publication).

Web links

• The Kayhauser bog body. Bad Zwischenahn, accessed on January 6, 2013 (description of the find). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ State Museum for Nature and People (ed.): Museum journal Nature and People: Natural history, cultural history, museum history . No. 6 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  1862-9083 (current test results on the remains of the piece of skin, pages 15).
2. ↑ Falk Georges Bechara: Histological, electron microscopic, immunohistological and IR spectroscopic investigations on the skin of 2000 year old bog corpses . Dissertation. Ruhr University, Bochum 2001, p. 27–29 ( ruhr-uni-bochum.de [PDF; accessed on October 20, 2009]).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Guinevere Granite, Andreas Bauerochse: X-Ray Fluorescent Spectroscopy and its Application to the Analysis of Kayhausen Boy . In: Landesmuseum für Natur und Mensch (Ed.): Museum Journal Natur und Mensch: Naturkunde, Kulturkunde, Museumskunde . No. 6 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  1862-9083 , p. 89-97 (English).
4. ↑ Falk Georges Bechara, 2001. Bechara speaks in his publication of hairline crack -lines .
5. ^ Hajo Hayen: The bog bodies in the museum on the dam . P. 35.
6. ↑ Johannes van der Plicht, Wijnand van der Sanden , AT Aerts, HJ Streurman: Dating bog bodies by means of ¹⁴ C-AMS . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . tape 31 , no. 4 , 2004, ISSN  0305-4403 , p. 471–491 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jas.2003.09.012 (English, ub.rug.nl [PDF; 388 kB ; accessed on June 2, 2010]).