Man from Osterby

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Osterby's head with suebian knot hairstyle

In the osterby man is the head of a bog body from the Köhlmoor, southeast of Osterby in Eckernförde .

Finding circumstances

While digging peat , the skull was found on May 26, 1948 by the brothers Otto and Max Müller from Osterby on their father's lot. It lay at a depth of around 65 to 70 cm below the surface of the moor at that time . Max Müller noticed the remains of fur hanging down from his spade. The two of them then searched the peat that had been thrown away and found the parts of the skull and cloak. The Damendorfer farmer Detlef Thomes reported the find to the museum in Schleswig. Despite intensive searches in the vicinity of the site, no further body parts were found.
Location: 54 ° 26 ′ 50.9 ″  N , 9 ° 46 ′ 9.5 ″  E Coordinates: 54 ° 26 ′ 50.9 ″  N , 9 ° 46 ′ 9.5 ″  E

Findings

Side view of the head with Suebi knot

The salvaged bundle consisted of pieces of fur with a skull wrapped in it, which were originally sunk in the moor. Both were damaged by a groundbreaking ceremony before the rescue. No other finds were made.

Anthropological Findings

The skull is almost complete in numerous fragments. The bones are decalcified by the action of the moor acids , have shrunk somewhat and are dark brown in color. Few parts of the scalp and the hair are well preserved, but the skin and tissues on the face are completely gone. A widespread injury was found on the left side of the skull, which may have led to death: the skull had been struck with a blunt object on an area about 12 cm in diameter, the bone on the left temple was completely splintered and partly deep into the brain penetrated. However, the skull as a whole has also been deformed by the mass of earth that weighs on it. Overall, the facial skeleton is well preserved and the upper face is almost undamaged. Due to the degree of adhesion of the cranial sutures and the anatomical features, the skull is ascribed to a man around 50 to 60 years old. Clearly recognizable cuts on the second cervical vertebra show that the head was forcibly severed from the trunk with a sharp object. The hair on the head was wavy and thin. A microscopic examination revealed that the discolored reddish-brown by the action of acids Moor head hairs were originally brown hair and the man due to age already had some single white hairs. Isotope analyzes on samples of the scalp hair showed in the revision in 2005 that the man, at least in the last year of his life, ate noticeably seldom meat , with herbivores making up the main part of his animal diet. On the other hand, sea animals such as fish or mussels were demonstrably not involved in his diet. The parasitological examinations of the hair showed that it was free of head lice , which was unusual for the time . To preserve it and prepare it for the exhibition in the museum, the skull was filled with plaster of paris for stabilization .

hairstyle

Coat of arms of the municipality of Osterby with Suebi knot

The most striking feature of the head is the hairstyle with the exceptionally well-preserved hair, which is tied in a so-called Suebi knot above the right temple . To do this, the man's long hair at the back of the head was divided vertically into two strands. The left strand was placed around the left of the head, low over the forehead, on the right side of the head. The right strand was placed above the right ear on the temple, over the left strand and both twisted with a sharp right twist . This strand was put into a loop and the loose end of the strand was pulled through in a loop. This Suebi knot is described by the Roman historian Tacitus in Chapter 38 of his Germania as a typical feature of free men among the Suebi , a Germanic tribe . He is also known from numerous Roman images on sculptures and at least one other archaeological find, that of the man from Dätgen . The municipality of Osterby has had the Suebian knot of the man from Osterby in its coat of arms since 1998 .

Fur cape

The already badly decayed piece of clothing in which the head was wrapped consists of tanned and sewn together pieces of fur. The recovered fragment is 40 cm wide and approximately 53 cm long. The pieces of fur were determined microscopically on the basis of the hair features as deer-like . The individual pieces of fur were connected with fine butt seams . The neckline is lined with a folded, about one centimeter wide leather strip. All seams were carefully executed with very fine gut strings . Some of the seams found suggest that they were later repair sites. Based on the available fragments, as well as some known comparative finds, the item of clothing is interpreted as a fur cape , and in the 20th century was also called a fur shoulder collar by textile archaeologists . Similar fur cloaks are known from numerous archaeological finds such as the women from Elling and Haraldskær , the girl from Dröbnitz , the boy from Kayhausen or the man from Jührdenerfeld .

Manipulations

The anthropological study of the skull was carried out by Peter Löhr, who found that the skull had shrunk from being stored in the bog. As part of his doctorate on the experimental shrinking of skulls, Löhr also made numerous experiments on the Osterby skull. He watered the skull several times, which caused it to swell, and then dried it again - accompanied by detailed measurements. Löhr assumed that the skull assumed its almost original size when it was swollen and did not shrink evenly when it was subsequently dried. For his examination, Peter Löhr presented the skull itself, severely shrunken teeth, and a complete lower jaw with a strongly protruding chin. Recent examinations of the Osterbyer head have shown that the skull exhibited in the permanent exhibition of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum Schloss Gottorf was supplemented with a lower jaw that did not originally belong to this head during preparation for the exhibition by Karl Schlabow , probably for aesthetic reasons.

Dating

The man from Osterby was dated to the Roman Empire due to his characteristic hairstyle . A 14 C-dating of a hair sample from the estate of Alfred Dieck , a possibly uncertain source, allowed the time of his death to be more precisely defined in the period between 75 and 130 AD.

interpretation

The circumstances of the find, the circumstances of the dumping of the man from Osterby and the objects found show numerous parallels to other bog body finds. Like other finds from the Iron Age , the man from Osterby was beheaded and laid in the bog. The fractures of the skull caused by being hit with a blunt object indicate an intended multiple killing. Whether the man was subjected to a death penalty based on Germanic legal customs or whether he was sacrificed can no longer be clarified with certainty today. Several bog bodies attest to this practice, including the man von Dätgen , who also wears a Suebian knot and whose head was found several meters from the body, and the wife of Roum Mose from Denmark . Whether the body of the man from Osterby was also deposited in the moor near the head can no longer be ascertained either, as this may have been mined with the peat unnoticed, is still undiscovered at a more distant place or has already been historically removed in another way .

literature

  • Michael Fee : Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein . Ed .: Association for the Promotion of Archaeolog. Landesmuseums eV, Gottorf Castle. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2002, ISBN 3-529-01870-8 .
  • 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. 1–2 (first publication).
  • Karl Schlabow : Hairstyle and fur shoulder collar of the bog body from Osterby . 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. 3-7 .
  • 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).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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 (first publication).
  2. ^ 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 0-494-12259-5 (English).
  3. ↑ coat of arms. Osterby Parish, archived from the original on February 26, 2009 ; Retrieved December 6, 2011 .
  4. ^ Osterby community, Rendsburg-Eckernförde district. In: Schleswig-Holstein's coat of arms. www.schleswig-holstein.de, accessed on February 5, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Peter Löhr: The bog body from Osterby. The experimental shrinkage of skulls . Anthropological Institute of the University of Kiel, Kiel 1950 (dissertation).
  6. ↑ Thomas Brock: Rehabilitation of a bog body . In: Adventure archeology: cultures, people, monuments . No. 1 , 2007, ISSN  1612-9954 , p. 58–63, here pp. 61–62 .
  7. ↑ Thomas Brock: Windeby - Secret of the bog bodies revealed. In: Spiegel online . August 17, 2007, accessed December 6, 2011 .
  8. ^ Wijnand van der Sanden : C14 dating of bog bodies from Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein . In: Lower Saxony State Association for Prehistory (Ed.): The customer NF No. 46 , 1995, ISSN  0342-0736 , pp. 137–155 (on the origin of the analyzed sample GrA-822).
  9. ↑ 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]).
personal data
SURNAME Man from Osterby
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bog corpse
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century
DATE OF DEATH between 75 and 130
Place of death near Osterby (Rendsburg-Eckernförde district)