Man from Rendswühren

Man from Rendswühren

The man from Rendswühren is a bog body that was found in 1871 in the Heidmoor near Rendswühren in the Schleswig-Holstein district of Plön . The remains of the man from Rendswühren are shown alongside other bog bodies in the permanent exhibition of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum at Gottorf Castle .

Reference

The Heidmoor near Rendswühren in September 2011 with a view towards the site.

Historical photo of the man from Rendswühren from 1873.

The Heidmoor, also called Great Moor and Rendswührener Moor in older sources , was originally a very fluid and almost inaccessible moor with very slow growth. The moor was drained by artificial drainage and could only then be used for the removal of baking peat , a fuel that was preferred by neighboring bakeries . The peat layer of the bog sank to a height of 180 cm as a result of the drainage and was completely peeled off to the ground. The site was on the Bothkamp estate in what was then the Bornhöved parish.
54 ° 3 '55 "  N , 10 ° 10' 3"  E Coordinates: 54 ° 3 '55 "  N , 10 ° 10' 3"  E

Find history

On June 1, 1871, while working in the bog, a peat worker discovered a male corpse lying prone, about 90 centimeters below the surface. First he exposed the left foot, which he took for a tree root or a calf's head and therefore severed it with his spade. Upon further exposure, he recognized the human corpse, the head of which was wrapped in a leather cloak and a woolen cloak. The find was brought to the apartment of the mayor of Rendswühren, where it was stored on a farm wagon in the barn for several days without a cover and accessible to the public. Numerous onlookers viewed the find, fiddled with the corpse and took some newspaper-sized pieces of clothing with them as souvenirs. Three days after the corpse was erected, the visitor to Grassau describes that the corpse was still in good condition, the body still had a fleshy fullness in parts, the skin now had a muddy, greasy surface, but did not develop an unpleasant odor and that there was still extensive hair on the head were present. The estate inspector reported the find to the royal public prosecutor's office in Kiel , which ordered a judicial investigation. Forester Möller, who took a close look at the find and suspected the corpse to be very old, informed the landlord Chamberlain von Bülow, who reported the events in a letter to the Museum of Patriotic Antiquities in Kiel, which was received there on June 5th. On the following day, June 6th, a Bordesholm magistrate appeared accompanied by the doctors Dr. Hansen from Neumünster and Dr. Kästner from Bordesholm , who autopsied the body on site and opened the skull, chest and abdominal cavity for it. They suspected that the dead person was a murdered Hungarian mousetrap dealer. A few hours after the court delegation had left, von Bülow arrived together with the archaeologist Heinrich Handelmann from the Kiel Museum of Patriotic Antiquities and the doctor Adolf Pansch from the University of Kiel , who found the find already in a badly damaged condition. The few remnants of the leather and woolen clothing lay in a heap next to the corpse. Both immediately recognized the old age of the present find and packed it in a waiting coffin. Von Bülow arranged for the immediate transport to the anatomical institute of the University of Kiel, where he was received the next day.

Scientific processing

After arriving at the anatomy on June 7, 1871, the corpse was washed thoroughly and freed from the adhering peat and plant residues that had partially grown into the body. This was followed by thorough anatomical examinations. Since the skull had already been opened and dismantled by the forensic medical commission, it was only available in individual parts and the scalp in two to three large rags. All skull bones were removed and put back together. A clay and peat model was made of the skull and the facial skin was reconstructed over it.

Current computed tomography examinations have shown that the scalp has been lined with another, as yet unknown material. The internal organs were removed from the body and preserved in alcohol. The bones and brain were dried. In order to support the cavities in the body created by the removal of organs, these were filled with seaweed. The body was then left to dry in a well-ventilated place, but after a few days it began to go moldy and gave off a slight odor of decay . It was then treated with high percentage alcohol and then finally dried. After drying, the bog corpse still weighed 4.5 kg. According to the current state of science, this entire procedure would no longer be practiced, since attempts are now being made to change the original findings as little as possible. The body was later exhibited in a metal display case with a glass lid in the Museum of Patriotic Antiquities. In the following years, more recent investigations were occasionally carried out on the remains of the bog body.

Findings

Face of the man from Rendswühren

Originally the man from Rendswühren lay stretched out on his stomach, his arms almost stretched out along the body, forearms and hands lying under the body. The head was covered with a fur cape and a rectangular wool coat . The head faced southeast and was about 40 centimeters lower than the feet. His legs were crossed one over the other. According to the finders, the body was already dry and firm when it was recovered, although it came from a layer of peat that was below the water level in the neighboring peat pits. When it was found, the skin had a deep dark brown color, almost like "a piece of smoked meat that was heavily smoked ..." . The left foot of the body was cut off by a groundbreaking ceremony, while the rest of the body, including ears and genitals, was completely intact. There was a strip of leather around the left ankle.

A dark brown discolored forearm bone of a horse was found in the vicinity of the site, but its connection with the man's disposal is uncertain. About four meters to the east, more leather clothing was excavated, but it could not be recovered.

Medical findings

The bog corpse was already badly affected when it was recovered, with its lower jaw broken and its left foot torn off. During the forensic medical examination , the sex of the bog corpse of Rendswühren could be determined as male due to the preserved genitals. The man was around 40 to 50 years old. The man's skeleton , skin, and scalp hair were preserved, with the skin on the front of the body better preserved than on the back. The bones were strongly decalcified by the action of the moor acids , were soft, pliable and had a dark brown color. The bones of the skull were soft and crumbly; however, the facial bones were better preserved. All 32 teeth were still present on the man's dentition when it was found, but some were stolen by onlookers after the excavation. The teeth now appear smaller because their enamel deposits had completely dissolved due to the long storage in the acidic moor environment. They were decalcified, discolored brown and had heavily chewed chewing surfaces. In some tooth cavities the jaw was visibly damaged by periodontal disease . Most of the soft tissues such as fat and muscle tissue were gone, only ligaments and tendons were still present. Inside the body, the organs were present , albeit greatly shrunk. In the gastrointestinal tract, no remains of food could be made out microscopically . Isotope analyzes during the revision in 2005 showed that the man had an increased meat consumption for his time , with herbivores forming the main part of the animal diet, whereas sea animals such as fish or mussels were demonstrably not part of his diet. Numerous injuries were found on the dead man's head. In addition to a wound in the skull bone above the right eye, the back of the head and the right parietal bone were completely shattered. The surface of the bog body was covered by a dense fleece made of plant roots, some of these roots penetrated through openings in the skin and continued to grow there. The man's head hair was about 5 cm long and discolored brown from the moor acid. Most of them had loosened from the scalp due to improper storage after the recovery, but they were still stuck to it.

Cause of death

The obvious injuries to the skull from massive blows suggest that the man from Rendswühren was violently killed. According to the finder, the clothes were grouped around the head of the deceased and, according to Möller, it looked as if they had slipped there. The man may have been dragged through the moor with his clothes slipping over his head.

Dating

The early dating of the man from Rendswühren was based on the textile typology , based on the items of clothing found, which were dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD during the Roman Empire . This dating could be more or less confirmed by a ¹⁴ C-dating of a textile and several skin samples carried out in the 1990s , but a more precise delimitation was not technically possible due to the state of preservation of the samples.

dress

According to the forester Möller, who had seen the find at an early stage, there was a rectangular woolen coat around the head of the corpse, about 130 cm long and 100 cm wide. The cloth was subsequently sewn and stuffed in several places and had a dark brown color due to the action of the moor acid. After the looting of the curious onlookers, only four fragments of the coat remain, all with fabric edges. Two pieces come from the braided leading edge of the fabric and indicate that the finished fabric was at least 122 cm wide. The cloth was woven in a carefully executed straight twill with about seven Z-twisted threads per centimeter in warp and weft , the weft threads exhibiting a looser twist than the warp threads. Groups of two by three different colored, presumably red colored, weft threads were woven 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. At an estimated 122 × 200 cm, the coat was relatively small compared to the coats from other bog finds such as the Thorsberger Moor , the Vehnemoor or Vaalermoor . In terms of size and design, it is more like the smaller specimens such as that of the man from Obenaltendorf .

The fur cloak, which was also around the head of the corpse, disintegrated into several pieces during the rescue. According to Möller, it had a coat-like cut and originally reached from the shoulders to the knees. It had armholes or slits, but no sleeves, and there were no buttons or toggles for a fastener. The coat was closed with one or more braided leather straps, one of which was still present shortly after the rescue. Only a few fragments of this mantle have survived. The cloak was sewn together from several pieces of fur with fine leather straps. In some places the seams were apparently done by another hand a little more carelessly and with coarser leather straps. This cloak was also patched in various places. Since the skins had different hair types of different hair lengths, Handelmann initially assumed that they were sheep and cattle skins, later he also considered wisent or aurochs . There are also numerous comparative finds for this fur cloak, such as that of the man from Osterby or the boy from Kayhausen .

A leather band was found around the left ankle, which was only later brought to the museum. The band consists of a hairy piece of leather 185 mm long and 65 mm wide, it was worn with the hair side inwards and was closed at the narrow ends with a crossed 12 mm wide leather band. Assumptions as to whether the leather strap belongs to a shoe cannot be confirmed.

During a later excavation, a large number of friable and torn leather fragments were found four meters away from the site at a depth of 115 cm, but the forester Möller was unable to recover the severely crumbled pieces of leather. He suspects that these pieces of leather had already been dug up during previous peat extraction work and then cooled down again.

In April 2021, a textile and a fur fragment were rediscovered during the revision of the storage holdings of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg . These pieces were given to the predecessor institution of the museum by the Neumünster private collector Dr. Max Kirmis handed over. The corresponding entry in the inventory book from 1890 noted: " Wool and leather from the clothes of a bog body from Rendswühren near Bornhöved ". Possibly these are fragments that were stolen during the " public " laying out of the find in the mayor's barn. Further scientific investigations should clarify their affiliation to the find of the man from Rendswühren.

literature

• Heinrich Handelmann , Adolf Pansch : Finds of bog bodies in Schleswig-Holstein . Schwers'sche Buchhandlung, Kiel 1873, p. 6-11, 17-29 (first publication).
• 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. 51, 55, 84, 162 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).

Web links

• The man from Rendswühren. Spiegel Online , accessed on December 6, 2011 (picture of the bog body). 
• TTK25 sheet 1927 Bornhoeved (edition 1930). In: GeoGREIF Geographical Collections. University of Greifswald , accessed on December 6, 2011 (the location is shown here as “Großer Moor” on the left edge of the map). 
• Rendswühren Man 100 BC-AD 100. In: The Perfect Corpse homepage. NOVA PBS, accessed December 6, 2011 (English, short description). 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich Handelmann , Adolf Pansch : Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein . Schwers'sche Buchhandlung, Kiel 1873, p. 6-11, 17-29 . Determined from archived copy ( memento of the original from August 25, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. TK25 sheet 1927 Bornhoeved (edition 1930) 
2. ^ ^{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).
3. ^ Handelmann, Pansch: Moor corpses in Schleswig-Holstein. P. 17
4. ↑ 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]).
5. ^ 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. 60–61, Figs. 104–108 .
6. ↑ Marita Schwalm: Remains of a bog body find in the depot (re) discovered? In: Archaeological Museum Hamburg. April 28, 2021, accessed April 28, 2021 .