Men of Hunteburg

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The so-called Men of Hunteburg were two bog bodies from the 3rd or 4th century that were found in 1949 in the Schwege district near the municipality of Bohmte in the Osnabrück district of Lower Saxony . The site was in Campemoor , part of the Great Moor and was formerly part of the Hunteburg district , from which the name of the find was derived.

Find history

On April 25, 1949, peat workers discovered pieces of cloth that were hanging out of the 4-meter-high peat wall, freshly cut with a shovel. They took a closer look at the pieces of cloth and discovered the remains of two human bodies. The management of the mining company stopped work immediately and notified the police. However, the criminal police could not find any evidence of a recently committed, modern crime and then notified the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover . On April 27 and 28, 1949, the archaeologist Wolfgang Dietrich Asmus from Hanover and the botanist Siegfried Schneider came to document and excavate the find in detail . This bog body find was one of the first that scientists could excavate from a bog right from the start. Almost all bog corpses found up to that point had not been properly recovered and only came into scientific custody later, after the precise context of the find had been lost and the bog corpses had already been permanently damaged. The find was recovered in the block and transported in a wooden box for further processing to the laboratory of the State Museum in Hanover. Since the museum could not raise enough financial resources for the required quantities of preservatives such as alcohol or formalin in the post-war years , it was decided to preserve the corpses as dry preparations . Only the genitals as well as fingernails and toenails were preserved separately in an alcohol solution. Since considerable shrinkage was to be expected during the drying of the corpses, a detailed plaster model of the find situation was made in the laboratory on May 9th after the bog was exposed. The scientific investigations were carried out by the museum director Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen , his assistant Wolfgang Dietrich Asmus , the botanist Siegfried Schneider, the anthropologist Gisela Asmus and other specialists. For the duration of the investigations, the corpses were regularly sprayed with an alcohol-formalin solution. The textiles were preserved separately by Karl Schlabow . After the investigations, the remains of the men were given to a Hanover chemical company to be dried. The corpses then disappeared there. They may have been burned due to an incorrect temperature setting on the drying oven. Location: 52 ° 27 '18.2 "  N , 8 ° 11' 44.6"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 27 '18.2 "  N , 8 ° 11' 44.6"  E

Findings

The men from Hunteburg lay about 105 cm below the surface of the moor, lying close to each other and with their heads facing west. Her head and shoulder areas had already been destroyed by an excavator. Neither stones nor pieces of wood to fix them in the bog were found above the corpses, as is often the case with other finds. Some loose body parts such as the lower jaw, the top of the skull, an incisor, cervical vertebrae and a few other loose bones could be collected from the peat that had already been cut. Each of the two bodies was wrapped in a rectangular coat, the ends of which had been carefully folded over the feet. With the exception of the two woolen coats, both men were apparently unclothed, and there were no other clothing or jewelry on them either. It is not certain whether they were actually wrapped naked in their coats, as any clothing made from vegetable raw materials such as flax fibers would have been decomposed in the acidic environment of the moor. Their skin was tanned leathery by the moor acids , torn open in some places and showed clear imprints of the material. Most of the bones were decalcified by the acids and their protein structure was greatly changed. A few bones and ribs had pierced the skin and were exposed. However, the position and shape of the bones was clearly visible under the skin. Both men had neatly trimmed fingernails and toenails. In the coats, scalp hair and the whiskers trimmed to around 2 cm could be recovered.

The man Hunteburg I

The man Hunteburg I was the rear of the two men. He presumably came to the moor lying on his left side, in a sleeping position with his legs slightly drawn up, and only later fell into a slightly supine position. He was about 20 years old, according to calculations of the found long bones and the skin covering 180 to 190 cm tall, of strong and slender stature. Originally he had soft, wavy hair about 18 cm long, blond to reddish-blond in color. A microscopic examination of 24 scalp hairs showed that they were largely intact and showed only moderate signs of weathering , such as jagged scales . Only the tear strength was greatly reduced. Some hairs showed incomplete shaft breaks, which were caused by hairdressing while still alive. The original hair color could not be determined with certainty under the microscope, as the reddish color pigments incorporated in the hair did not allow any conclusions to be drawn as to whether they were chemically changed during storage or penetrated through storage in the bog. His body was destroyed from the collarbones up by the peat digger. The loosely found fragment of the lower jaw could be assigned to him and showed that his wisdom teeth had not yet erupted, while the remaining teeth were already missing when it was found. His fingernails were trimmed straight.

The man Hunteburg II

The man in front Hunteburg II was about 30 years old and about 190 cm tall. His head and left upper arm had been destroyed by the excavator. The right arm and shoulder area were less well preserved than those on his left side. He lay in his sleeping position on his left side and was protected from displacement by the man Hunteburg I lying behind him. His upper body had slumped to within a few inches. There was a lot of fancy hair in his coat, including about 10 cm long hair on his head, some fancy eyelashes, beard hair with hair roots and parts of his body hair. The man's hair was originally blonde, but darker and smoother than that of his neighbor. His beard, on the other hand, was much more curled up. Except for his upper body, the man had very strong body hair. Its skin showed numerous cracks, it was detached along its spine and found itself in the coat. His fingernails and toenails were rounded off. The loosely collected cervical vertebrae, the skullcap and the entire lower jaw with three molars on the left and two on the right could be assigned to this man due to the adhering wool fibers from the coat .

textiles

The two cloaks from the find are among the best preserved splendid Iron Age cloaks. They were sent to the Textile Museum Neumünster for further processing and examined in detail by the textile specialist Karl Schlabow. Both coats were soaked with a greasy, sticky mass of secretions from the corpses that was firmly attached to the fabric. The cloths of the two coats were made on weight looms, and board- woven braids were woven to decorate and reinforce the surrounding fabric edges. The coat B of the man in front measures 253 cm × 176 cm and has a 5 cm wide board edge on one side, which was created with the help of 27 web boards; the other side edges are a bit narrower. Traces of color from woad and reseda in the fabric of the fabric, which has now turned brown due to storage in the moor, indicate that the coat was originally colored bright blue and yellow or a mixture of green. To reinforce the decorative look of the jacket, the warp threads hanging out of the fabric edge were artfully braided into fringes . Darning marks indicate that the coat was worn for a long time. Using the folds, crease marks and holes for a fibula preserved in the fabric, it was possible to precisely reconstruct how the coat was worn. The scarf was folded in the middle, draped over the left shoulder and neck and closed with a fibula on the right shoulder.

Dating

The discovery of some remains of flowering heather suggests that the men probably got into the moor in late summer. The pollen-analytical dating of the peat layer in which the men lay revealed a period of deposition from the 5th to the 1st century BC. Typologically , the two coats date to the pre-Roman Iron Age and the Roman Empire . In contrast, radiocarbon dating ( 14 C dating) of two hair samples using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) revealed a deposit in the moor between 245 and 415 AD.

interpretation

The profile in the cut bog around the site indicated that the men were not placed in a sunk into the bog. They were wrapped in precious cloaks and carefully buried or at least laid down in the moor . The very good state of preservation indicates that they were placed in the very damp bog and covered with peat plagues . They died in an era in which cremation was the common form of burial in this region, from which there were only a few exceptions. These circumstances make the execution or simple disposal of murder victims seem unlikely. Accidental death can almost certainly be ruled out due to the find situation. Due to the lack of head and shoulders, the exact cause of death cannot be determined. Taken together, all the circumstances of the find indicate that the men were ritually killed and sacrificed in the bog . Various theories have been put forward about the reasons for the presumed sacrifice of the two men, such as a punishment of two physically dishonored homosexuals , or the punishment of defensive but unwilling deserters based on Chapter 12.1 of Tacitus ' work De origine et situ Germanorum after which ignavi (" Cowards ”), imbelles (“ unwilling to fight ”) and corpore infames (personally free men who, according to Tacitus, assumed the sexually passive role in same-sex contacts) were punished by being dumped in the moor. According to other interpretative theories, it could be a special burial with a disaster-defensive background due to a special role that both deceased had in their social environment ; or because the men had lost their lives at an inopportune time without any recognizable external influence - not in old age, after illness or injury - and were given a special burial either temporarily or permanently in the bog to prevent revenge . Another conceptual model sees the moor burial of the two men as a kind of transitional grave in order to conserve the deceased for a period of time until the relatives were able to enjoy the costly, class-appropriate burial according to the generally accepted burial rite . Similar finds of several people sunk together in the moor are among others with the two men from Weerdinge from the Weerdingerveen , a part of the Bourtanger moor belonging to the Netherlands from around 40 BC and 50 AD, or the two 16 and 35-year-old men from Bolkilde on the Danish island of Als ( Sydjylland ) from around 3490–3370 BC, although they date older. With the bog bodies of Wijster there is a simultaneous laying down of four individuals.

More finds

The Great Moor near Hunteburg contained other archaeological finds that have been well documented. However, there is no recognizable connection between these finds.

The foot of Hunteburg

As early as May 7, 1938, a left foot stuck in a boot was found about 320 meters from the place where the two men were found. The boot was upright, about three feet below the surface in the peat, next to it was a birch stake that was tilted slightly over the shoe. During the rescue, the boot disintegrated into its individual parts due to the sewing threads dissolved in the moor acid. It consisted of a piece of upper leather and a sole about 30 centimeters long. The shaft leather was cut into three parts by a spade. An originally existing triangular gusset on the inside of the upper was missing. The shoe leather came from a very strong cow and showed only few signs of wear, which indicates a relatively little worn boot. The foot was an almost complete skeleton with tissue and tendon remnants attached. There were no signs of cuts or blows on the bones, but the area around the ankle showed stronger signs of decay. During a subsequent excavation, neither further bones nor the leather gusset could be found. After drying, the skeleton of the foot was only 21 centimeters long and six centimeters wide in 1945, but originally belonged to a full-grown man. Typologically, the boot was dated to the 13th to 14th centuries. In the 1990s this dating could be confirmed by a 14 C-AMS examination of a skin sample from the period between 1215 and 1300 AD.

Hunteburg III

A short time after the men from Hunteburg I and II were found, another male bog corpse, the man from Hunteburg III, was found. However, this find received little attention in the archaeological literature. Based on a radiocarbon dating ( 14 C dating) of a tissue sample carried out in the 1990s , the man was dated to the period between 40 BC and 70 AD.

literature

  • Sabine Eisenbeiß: The men of Hunteburg and the research on bog corpses . In: Lower Saxony State Association for Prehistory (Ed.): The customer NF No. 60 , 2009, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 249-260 .
  • 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).
  • Giesela Asmus: The anthropological findings of the moor corpses from the Great Moor near Hunteburg . In: Lower Saxony Regional Association for Prehistory (ed.): Die Kunde NF 6 Issue 3-4, 1955, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 50-59 .
  • Wolfgang Dietrich Asmus : Finding and recovering the bog corpses in the Great Moor near Hunteburg, district of Wittlage . In: Lower Saxony Regional Association for Prehistory (ed.): Die Kunde NF 6 Issue 3-4, 1955, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 37-40 .
  • Siegfried Schneider: Botanical-geological investigation of the site of the bog corpses in the Great Moor at Dümmer . In: Lower Saxony Regional Association for Prehistory (ed.): Die Kunde NF 6 Issue 3-4, 1955, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 40-49 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Sabine Eisenbeiß: The men of Hunteburg and the research on bog corpses. In: The customer. New series, number 60, 2009 ISSN  0342-0736 , pp. 249-260.
  2. ^ Sabine Eisenbeiß: Moor corpses in Lower Saxony. In: Archeology in Lower Saxony. Volume 11 ( focus: wet soil archeology ), 2008, ISSN  1615-7265 , pp. 40–41.
  3. ↑ Location estimated.
  4. ^ Correction NF 6, volume 3/4, year 1955. In: Die Kunde. Number 7, Issue 1-2, 1956, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 66.
  5. ↑ HG Meiers: Microscopic Hair finding of the bog body I from Hunteburg. In: The customer. New series, number 24, 1973, ISSN  0342-0736 , pp. 185-188.
  6. ↑ a b c 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]).
  7. ^ Tacitus: Agricola. Germania. Latin and German. Edited by Alfons Städele ( Tusculum Collection ). Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, p. 34 (explanations on the Tacitus text).
  8. ↑ Similar to the preservation of human Moor in Cladh Hallan
  9. ↑ Gundula Lidke: Investigations on the meaning of violence and aggression in the Neolithic of Germany with special consideration of Northern Germany. Dissertation, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald 2005, pp. 206–207 ( ub-ed.ub.uni-greifswald.de PDF; 3.9 MB ).
  10. ^ Siegfried Schneider: A boot with skeletal remains from the Great Moor near Hunteburg. In: The customer. New series, number 7, issue 1–2, 1956, ISSN  0342-0736 , pp. 46–54.