Moor corpse Bremervörde FStNr. 98

General view of the bog body

Lower jaw and collarbones

The bog body Bremervörde site no. 98 (also bog corpse from Bremervörde Gnattenbergswiesen or bog corpse from Niedermoortorf ) is a bog corpse from the 7th century, which was found in 1934 during dike construction work for the Schwinge-Oste Canal near Bremervörde in the Lower Saxony district of Rotenburg (Wümme) . The remains of the skeletonized bog body are shown in the Bachmann Museum at Bremervörde Castle .

Find history

The site was on the Gnattenbergswiesen near the Lilienberg district on the former Elmer Beck, today's Schwinge-Oste Canal. At the end of September 1934, the two volunteer workers, Holste and Mordzinski , came across the bones about one meter from the bank of the canal while building dykes for the Schwinge-Oste Canal. District architect Freter reported the find to August Bachmann, a volunteer cultural monument curator. He forwarded the report by telephone to the biologist Reinhold Tüxen and in writing to Hermann Schroller, the curator of the Provincial Museum in Hanover . Bachmann arrived at the site on October 2nd, where he found the bones already completely exposed. Since the visit to the site announced by Schroller for October 20th did not materialize, the find was recovered and documented by Bachmann. Bachmann first published the find on February 29, 1936.
Location: 53 ° 30 ′ 11.9 ″  N , 9 ° 10 ′ 21.2 ″  E Coordinates: 53 ° 30 ′ 11.9 ″  N , 9 ° 10 ′ 21.2 ″  E

Findings

At the site of the discovery, the soil consisted of a layer of dark peat , on top of which there was a 30 cm thick layer with a high proportion of lawn iron stone , followed by a five to six cm thick layer of pure lawn iron stone, and above that a 40 cm thick layer of fen directly under the humus layer . The corpse lay parallel to the Oste-Schwinge Canal with the head pointing north at a depth of about 130 to 150 cm below the surface in the layer of dark peat under the layer of iron stone. According to the workers, no remains of clothing or other personal items were found on the body.

Anthropological Findings

The preserved bones of the bog body are marked in red

There is only an incomplete skeleton of the corpse . The remaining parts are the lower jaw with the molars ( tooth formula on both sides P2, M1, M2 and M3), both collarbones , the right shoulder blade with humerus , both elbows and spokes , the right pelvic vane , the left femur and both tibia , fibula and ankle bones . Of the spinal column which are cervical vertebrae C1 and C2, the thoracic vertebra T4 and T8 and the lumbar vertebrae L3 and L4, and a sacrum fragment before. The bones are slate-gray in color and have almost bare surfaces with few signs of weathering and scratches. The majority of the scratch and cut marks can be traced back to improper excavation by laypeople and the subsequent preparation. There were no traces of animal damage or damage from plant roots, nor did the skeletal parts show any signs of violence that could be related to death.

The sex was determined on the basis of characteristic bone features. The iliac and lower jaw suggest a male individual, but the data are within the normal overlap areas for both sexes. On the other hand, all the other bones, due to their delicate structure and the more delicate muscle attachment marks, speak more for a female individual. Overall, in the body of a woman is at a height of about 160 cm assumed to 165th Their age is estimated to be around 40 years due to degeneration marks in the pubic bone area , significant tooth abrasion and signs of wear on the vertebrae and joints. The woman suffered from a chronic but not inflammatory periodontal disease , the roots of both molars M2 show slight caries and the right wisdom tooth shows enamel caries . The head of the femur and the socket that was preserved showed signs of the onset of hip arthrosis .

Dating

After the discovery, the bog body was dated to the older Bronze Age due to the layer of finds in the bog below the layer of lawn iron ore described by the workers . A pollen-analytical dating by botanists from the Hannover Provincial Museum did not come about. A scientific dating of the find carried out in 2010 by means of ¹⁴ C-AMS dating of some bone samples at the isotope laboratory of the University of Erlangen resulted in a calibrated dating to the period around 634–689 AD.

interpretation

The cause of death could not be clearly determined from the available skeletal parts ; neither a violent homicide nor a natural homicide or an accident can definitely be confirmed or excluded. The signs of weathering on the bone surfaces indicate that the corpse was exposed to the air for a while, where a process of decomposition took place for a short time , before it was finally stored in the humid environment. The position of the corpse along the direction of the river, as well as the missing skeletal parts, indicate that the body was possibly driven during floods of the Oste, here lay for some time above the water surface and gradually became embedded in the bank sediment , where the body was preserved in the absence of air . The preservation of the bones with simultaneous loss of the soft tissue is due to the formation of fens and the calcareous soil at the site, which prevents the bone material from degrading. The missing body parts and bones may have been carried away by the river current.

literature

• Stefan Hesse, Silke Grefen-Peters, Christina Peek, Jennifer Rech, Ulrich Schliemann: The bog bodies in the district of Rotenburg (Wümme) Research history and new studies . In: Archaeological reports of the Rotenburg district (Wümme) . No. 16 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  0946-8471 , p. 31–88 here: pp. 47–54 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Guinevere Granite: Portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Its Research Applications to Northern European Bog Bodies . State University of New York, Buffalo 2012, p. 87–89 (English, umi.com [PDF; 12.9 MB ; accessed on April 27, 2013] dissertation). PDF; 12.9 MB ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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.  
2. ↑ Bachmann Museum Bremervörde inventory number A 2010: 0243
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Stefan Hesse, Silke Grefen-Peters, Christina Peek, Jennifer Rech, Ulrich Schliemann: The bog bodies in the district of Rotenburg (Wümme) Research history and new studies . In: Archaeological reports of the Rotenburg district (Wümme) . No. 16 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  0946-8471 , p. 31–88 here: pp. 47–54 .
4. ↑ August Bachmann: Old finds in home soil . In: Twüschen Elw and Weser . February 29, 1936 (picture supplement in the Bremervörder Zeitung).
5. ↑ Determined from Stefan Hesse, Silke Grefen-Peters, Christina Peek, Jennifer Rech, Ulrich Schliemann: The bog bodies in the district of Rotenburg (Wümme) Research history and new investigations . In: Archaeological reports of the Rotenburg district (Wümme) . No. 16 . Isensee, 2010, ISSN  0946-8471 , p. 47-48 .
6. ↑ Probe Erl-14454: 1360 ± 44 Before Present ; δ ¹³ C = -19.8; 634-689 calAD (63.7%), 751-760 calAD (4.6%)