Man from Damendorf

Man from Damendorf

The man from Damendorf (also Damendorf 1900 ) is a bog corpse from the Roman Empire that was found in 1900 while cutting peat in the lake bog near Damendorf in the Schleswig-Holstein district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde . The man's clothes and skin are in excellent condition and are in the permanent exhibition of the Archaeological State Museum Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig .

Location

The lake moor has an area of ​​23 hectares , is located about 200 meters east of the municipality of Damendorf and about 1500 meters northwest of Groß Wittensee in the Hüttener Berge landscape . In the past, peat was extracted from the bog as fuel. Today it is a wetland with largely natural areas, which is designated as a natural experience area and accessible with an approximately 2.5 km long circular hiking trail .

More finds

A total of three human bodies were found in the nearby Ruchmoor near Damendorf. In 1884 and 1947 remains of corpses and clothing, which are no longer preserved. In addition, in 1934 the skull and some bones of a 14-year-old girl, as well as remains of clothing, some stakes, stones and a leather container, which were dated to the Bronze Age , were found.

Find

On May 28, 1900, two peat workers came across remnants of woolen clothing while digging peat at a depth of about 2.5 to three meters on the plot of the Damendorfer innkeeper Hagge , and while digging further they came across the body of a person. The workers reported their find to the Damendorfer community leader Sye, who passed the report on to the district administrator Freiherrn von der Reck. The district administrator immediately telegraphed the report to the Museum of Patriotic Antiquities in Kiel , whereupon the museum curator Dr. Splieth and von der Reck traveled to Damendorf to investigate and secure the find. The find was bought from the owner of the Hagge moor plot, carefully packed and arrived at the museum on June 1st, whereupon the first conservation measures were initiated.

Preservation

First, the top of the corpse was mechanically stripped of plant roots that had partially penetrated the skin. The body was then washed off with a solution of 0.1% sublimate and alcohol to prevent mold growth . To prevent the corpse from shrinking too much during the subsequent drying process, it was soaked in glycerine and turpentine . Finally, the corpse was completely dried in a draft for several weeks .

Findings

The man from Damendorf lay on the left side of his body, his head was pulled back a little and rested on his outstretched left arm. The right arm was stretched out over the head. Both legs were slightly bent. His body is flattened to a thickness of only one to four centimeters by the layers of peat overlying him. Preserved skeletal parts , including parts of the pelvis, remains of brain matter and intestines, were found within the man's skin . His hair, discolored reddish by the moor acids, was about 15 cm long on the sides, but shortened to about 2 cm in front. Unusually high concentrations of mercury and lead were found in the hair , which suggest that the man processed metals such as gold or silver during his lifetime , from the melting of which these heavy metals outgas . The cause of death was probably a clearly recognizable puncture in the heart area, probably a knife stab wound. By means of a ¹⁴ C investigation , the man from Damendorf could be dated to the Roman Empire , more precisely 135–335 AD.

dress

Items of man's trousers

The unrolled calf wrap

Man's waist shoes

With the dead, numerous items of clothing were found, including a jacket that covered the corpse, long pants , which lay at his feet, a pair of cold compresses , leather collar shoes , and two leather straps. All textiles obtained consist of wool , which had taken on a medium brown color due to the action of the moor acids. The leather shoes and straps, on the other hand, have taken on a dark to black-brown color.

coat

The coat was originally rectangular with a length of about 238 cm and a width of 183 cm at the top and 165 cm at the bottom. The shawl is preserved in two fragments of 52 × 32 cm and 66 × 96 cm. The cloth was badly worn, stuffed in several places and patched up with patches made of coarser cloth. The upper 75 cm of the cloak was folded over and sewn on overcast so that the cloak had an almost square shape when it was laid down in the bog. The cloth itself was in Gleichgratköper woven, which in places becomes a plain weave. The tissue was rotated Z with 3.6 threads in chain and also about 3.3 Z-gedredrehten threads in the weft woven , the weft threads having a looser rotation than the warp threads. In places the warp threads lie twice in the compartments . Groups of two by three different colored, presumably red colored, weft threads were interwoven at regular intervals, creating a decorative striped pattern on the finished cloth. The remaining warp and weft threads consisted of undyed, slightly crimped sheep's wool with only a few stylus hairs. The coat from Damendorf is well comparable with preserved coats such as those from the Thorsberger Moor , the Vehnemoor or Vaalermoor . In terms of size and quality, however, it corresponds more to the smaller and simpler specimens such as those of the man from Obenaltendorf or the man from Bermuthsfeld .

trousers

The trousers are not completely preserved in six loose pieces of fabric. All the seams were undone, which is most likely due to linen sewing threads that had passed in the moor acids. However, all fabric parts could be reconstructed into ankle-length trousers based on the model of trousers from the Thorsberger Moor . The cloth of the trousers appears lighter and finer than that of the coat. It was woven in a meticulous diamond twill with about 12 threads per centimeter. After the restoration, the trousers have a length of 115 cm and the width of the damaged waistband is around 85 cm. The lower end of the trouser legs were formed by tabs, which were probably sewn under the feet as webs . At the knee level, the pants fabric shows stronger signs of wear.

Wrap bandages

With the corpse there were two leggings made of wool, each 105 cm long and 10 cm wide. The fabrics were form-woven in twill weave and have solid selvedges on three sides, the fourth side has only been damaged.

belt

The leather belt is preserved in two fragments with a total length of 75 cm. The three cm wide strap is tapered to two cm at the ends and bent over at one end and sewn with a few stitches, the other end has seven holes, one of which is wider. Metal parts, a buckle are not preserved, these were probably made of iron and have passed in the acidic moor environment. The surface of the belt is decorated with seven groups of pressed-in lying crosses and vertical lines. The total length of the belt can no longer be reconstructed because the fracture surfaces of the two parts do not fit together.

Shoes

The waistband shoes were each cut from a single piece of hairy cowhide. The heels are with sewing threads of tendon or intestine sutured and enhanced by an attached cap. On the back of the foot, the leather of the shoe was stretched and shaped through numerous geometrically arranged incisions and tied on the inside of the feet by a drawn strap on the instep. Remnants of hair on the inside of the shoe leather indicate that the cowhide was still hairy and was worn with the hair side inwards. After the recovery, there were still clearly complete, approximately 24 cm long, footprints on the soles. After the preservation, the shoes were 27 cm long, which corresponds to the modern shoe size 38, whereby a certain shrinkage compared to the original size due to the long storage in the moor and the subsequent preservation must be taken into account.

literature

• Michael Fee : Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein . Ed .: Association for the Promotion of Archaeolog. Landesmuseums e. V., Gottorf Castle. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2002, ISBN 3-529-01870-8 .
• 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).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sea bog. In: Strassenkatalog.de. Retrieved December 5, 2011 . 
2. ↑ Damendorf. Office Hüttener Berge, accessed on April 27, 2020 . 
3. ^ Karl Kersten : A bog body find from Osterby near Eckernförde . In: Institute for Pre- and Protohistory of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Ed.): Offa. Reports and Communications on prehistory, early history, etc. Medieval archeology . tape 8 . Wachholtz, 1949, ISSN  0078-3714 , p. 1, fig. 1 .
4. ^ 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 , pp. 82, 84, 103-104 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Johanna Mestorf : Moor corpses . In: Report of the Museum of Patriotic Antiquities at the University of Kiel . tape 42 . Lipsius & Tischer, Kiel 1900, p. 3–10 (first publication).
6. ^ ^{A b} Heather Catherine Gill-Robinson: The iron age bog bodies of the Archaeologisches Landesmuseum, Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig, Germany . Dissertation. University of Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada 2006, ISBN 978-0-494-12259-4 (English).
7. ↑ 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]).
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Karl Schlabow : Textile finds from the Iron Age in Northern Germany . In: Göttingen writings on prehistory and early history . tape 15 . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1976, ISBN 3-529-01515-6 , pp. 58–59, Figs. 101–103 .

Coordinates: 54 ° 25 ′ 21.7 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 35.2"  E