Mrs. von Peiting

The bog corpse Frau von Peiting , also known in popular science as the bog corpse Rosalinde , was found in a wooden coffin in 1957 while cutting peat in the Weiter Filz bog in an area between the Upper Bavarian communities of Peiting and Hohenpeißenberg . According to more recent research, the find dates back to the 14th or 15th century and is one of the few documented and preserved bog bodies from Bavaria.

Location

The site is in the Weiter Filz moor , in the area of ​​the municipality of Hohenpeißenberg, district of Weilheim-Schongau , near the municipality boundary to Peiting ( 47 ° 48 ′ 56.1 ″  N , 10 ° 58 ′ 13.5 ″  E, coordinates: 47 ° 48 56.1 "  N , 10 ° 58" 13.5 "  E ). From 1923 to 1990 peat was industrially mined in this bog. During this peat work, several years earlier, about 750 m north of the site, a billet dam was cut several times , which was gradually completely dismantled. Initially, the site was attributed to the municipality of Peiting. Only after the site was redefined in 2007, its location in the Hohenpeissenberg area was confirmed. The previously often published and incorrect designation of the site as Schwarzer Laich or Schwarzlaichmoor was due to a misleading mention of the excavation technician Wilfried Titze in his excavation report, which was subsequently published incorrectly. Titze reported on written battles from 1525, which are said to have taken place in the Schwarzlaichmoor about one kilometer further south-east. This confusion was also facilitated by an associative connection of the field name “ Laich ” (translated for “ clearing ”) with the word “ corpse ”.

Finding circumstances

On July 23, 1957, the worker Samuel Gunsch hit the wooden box with an excavator in the vertically cut peat wall. Assuming it was a treasure chest, he stopped work. After looking through the corner of the cover that had been torn open with the excavator shovel, he recognized the contents. Gunsch informed the manager of the peat extraction company of the Kaufbeuren company Momm & Co. KG , who had the box covered with peat again to protect it from drying out, and reported the find to the responsible authorities. The police summoned recognized the historical significance of the find, informed the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Munich on July 24 and secured the site. On the same day the excavation technician Wilfried Titze arrived on behalf of the State Office and began uncovering the find for several days. He carried out exploratory boreholes within four meters of the site, which, however, did not reveal any further findings in the ground.

Due to a lack of experience with the conservation of bog finds, the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments entrusted Karl Schlabow from the Neumünster Textile Museum with the scientific processing and conservation of the find, as Schlabow was known as an expert on these types of finds at the time. On July 29, Schlabow traveled to the rescue with his assistant Willi Schramm. The find and coffin were packed in a wooden crate, secured with soft peat waste and transported to Neumünster on a sprung truck.

In May 1959 Titze examined the cut billet dam and drew wood samples from it, which, however, were not examined further and are now lost. In the autumn of 1962, Titze undertook a subsequent excavation at the site of the bog body. He determined the exact depth of the bog of 1.2 meters through soundings and a large search cut down to the clay soil, but these excavations did not reveal any further findings. In his report he also stated that the stick dam had now been completely destroyed.

Scientific processing and conservation

The first scientific processing took place after arrival in Neumünster under the direction of Rudolf Ullemeyer and Karl Schlabow. The corpse was autopsied by several forensic doctors from Neumünster , for which the torso was opened over a large area. All internal organs were removed and preserved separately. Organ samples were sent to various institutes around the world for further special examinations. After the autopsy, conservation work began on August 5, 1957. The woman's body was preserved for nine months in an Eichenlohe bath and by partially brushing it with an oil . The empty torso after the organ removal was filled with fillers, presumably scraps of paper. The dissection incisions were sutured and any skin defects that had arisen were compensated for with filling material. For the final preparation of the body for the museum presentation, instead of the removed bone segments, such as the cervical spine, splints made of metal and wood were inserted and loose bones were connected with wire splints. Missing or removed bones were partially replaced by wooden replicas. Extracted teeth were also supplemented with artificial teeth , whereby not all teeth and bones were inserted in the anatomically correct association. The skull sawed open during the autopsy was fixed with metal pins and then glued back together. The visible seams were covered with a filling compound and paint. The coffin was preserved with methyl cellulose and repeated several times with a diluted varnish . A velor fabric was glued in places to the floor inside the coffin . The boots, which were recovered in individual parts, were treated with Dégras , a tanner fat, and then sewn back together.

Property issue

After the scientific investigations and the conservation measures were completed in the early 1960s, neither the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Bavaria nor the municipality of Peiting raised any claim to the find, so the bog body was kept and exhibited in the Neumünster Textile Museum. It was not until 1987 that the Peiting community asked for the find back so that it could be exhibited in the Schongauer Heimatmuseum on its 550th anniversary. After an impending legal dispute, the community and the Neumünster Textile Museum agreed to loan the find to the community for its 550th anniversary in 1988 . With the restructuring of the former Neumünster Textile Museum, the find was handed over to the Free State of Bavaria in 2007 , which is responsible for the further preservation and scientific investigation of the find. In the Bavarian moor and peat museum Rottau a model of the find will be issued.

Revision

With the transfer of the find to the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation in 2007, interdisciplinary studies based on the current state of science followed. These examinations should document the current condition as well as the changes made to the corpse of the find. The knowledge gained so far should be checked and, above all, new, far-reaching questions clarified. In the course of this, the history of the find was reconstructed based on the file situation and research was carried out on the preparations that were sent to other institutes. The research showed in many cases that planned examinations were not carried out for various reasons and reports such as preparations can no longer be found. However, the first current research results show that the find has to be fundamentally reassessed and that many of the frequently published findings have to be revised. In addition, numerous other investigations are planned, such as isotope analyzes , DNA analyzes , histological and toxicological examinations to clarify further questions.

Findings

The coffin lay at a depth of about 50 cm below the surface, facing east-west, with the head end in the east and looking west. In the coffin lay the well-preserved corpse of a woman with her arms crossed on her chest, her left hand over her right. The woman wore a long, fine wool dress and, as the most noticeable item of clothing, knee-high leather boots. No other jewelry was observed in the coffin, except for a wooden hairband. The woman's body was not compressed by the layers of earth above her because it was protected in the massive coffin, unlike most bog corpses, whose bodies are often compressed to a thickness of only a few centimeters.

Anthropological Findings

As the photos of the excavation and the autopsy reports show, the woman's body was in an exceptionally good state of preservation, even for bog corpses . Only the face, the hands under the chin and parts of the breasts were more skeletal. Due to the bent leg posture and the loose head, your body is 146 cm long. The calculated body height was given as 152 cm in 1957. The gender diagnosis as female could be clearly confirmed due to the clearly recognizable genitals and characteristic skeletal features. The skeleton is almost complete. The bones are severely decalcified and were soft and pliable when found. After preservation and drying, the bones are significantly lighter in weight. The skeleton showed no traces of injuries sustained or broken bones healed during lifetime. The skin was tanned by the " moor acid " and also showed no signs of injury. After the preservation in Eichenlohe, it has a brownish to brownish red color and a tough, leathery consistency. The numerous incisions observed in the skin are obviously all due to the autopsy and various samples taken after the recovery. The fatty tissue under the skin is transformed into corpse wax . All internal organs were complete and well preserved at the autopsy in 1957 and showed no pathological changes. The observed signs of a healed colon inflammation and a slight, overcome pulmonary tuberculosis , can no longer be checked due to the lost organ specimens. For the same reason, the soot deposits in the alveoli , presumably caused by the domestic fire, can no longer be checked. The absence of Harris lines (growth disorders ) on the bones shows that the woman did not suffer from malnutrition or serious illnesses as she grew up . The highly dilated areas of skin with the remains of pronounced fat deposits in the abdomen, hips and thighs also indicate that the woman was very well nourished during her lifetime. The absence of degenerative changes in the skeleton and wear-free joint areas of her skeleton show that the woman did not do any heavy physical work. The woman's dentition is missing three teeth that were lost during her lifetime, the empty tooth pockets of which had healed well. Four other teeth were badly carious and must have constantly caused severe toothache to the woman. Her upper jaw showed a significant overbite of two to three centimeters, which must have marked her face conspicuously. Compared to the upper jaw, their lower jaw was unusually wide, but this can also be attributed to a deformation of the lower jaw bone due to its storage in the bog. Due to the enamel crowns degraded by the moor acid , an analysis of the signs of wear on the teeth was only possible to a limited extent. However, the dentine bodies obtained did not show any unusual signs of wear. The woman's main hair was lightly mottled and averaged 15 cm. She wore it combed back and held in place with a two-tone ribbon of tablet tissue. The age of death of the woman was estimated to be between 15 and 25 years based on the status of the cranial sutures , a maximum of 25 years based on the dentition, and between 20 and 30 years based on other skeletal features and fused growth plates of the bones. Overall, the age at death is assumed to be between 20 and 30 years.

A mold infestation - new since the last examination - was registered on the corpse's skin and had to be removed mechanically.

Last meal

According to digestive tract examinations in the 1950s, the woman ate her last food around six to eight hours before she died. The samples of the stomach , intestines and excrement residues examined at the Lower Saxony State Office for Marsh and Wurten Research in Wilhelmshaven and the forensic medicine department of the Hamburg University Clinic Eppendorf only revealed plant remains of vegetables , lettuce plants , husks of grain and a few fibers from animal food. No evaluable pollen was found in the samples . A more precise specification of these results is hardly possible, since the intestinal contents were no longer available as early as 1960 and the samples taken today are largely considered to be lost.

Pregnancy symptoms

Based on the studies carried out in the 1950s to 1970s, it was assumed that the woman gave birth to a child shortly before her death and that she probably died in childbed . This was mainly derived from the extremely dilated abdominal tissue , the protruding vaginal edges , the expanded pelvic ring and the condition of the uterus . However, recent radiological examinations could neither clearly confirm nor refute this finding. According to Klaus Püschel , the pregnancy symptoms described can also have been caused by the beginning of the putrefaction process .

Isotope analyzes

The X-ray fluorescence spectroscopic examination of metal isotopes in teeth and bones to determine the geographical origin of Frau von Peiting produced various findings. The isotope values of teeth differed greatly from those of bones. Accordingly, an exchange and significant accumulation of isotopes in the bones must have taken place during the storage time in the bog, whereas the isotopes in the harder tooth material were isolated more stably. A further heavy entry of metal isotopes into the bones occurred through preservatives during the conservation measures after the rescue. Especially in the areas where the arm bones were fixed in their anatomical bandage by wire windings, unusually high concentrations of metal ions were measured. The evaluation of the strontium isotope analysis of the teeth and bones in comparison with geochemical data from soil samples from the site showed that the von Peiting woman probably did not come from the vicinity of the site.

Cause of death

The forensic examinations did not reveal any evidence of the cause of death. Death due to toxicological causes or a rapid disease or infection that was overlooked during the previous autopsy would also be possible . Due to the missing organ samples, this can most likely no longer be determined. In addition, the past skin and muscle tissue in the neck area makes it difficult to detect a possible strangulation, which has also been observed in many other bog corpses .

Archaeological evidence

In addition to the well-preserved corpse of Frau von Peiting, the textile remains found and the excellently preserved boots are of particular scientific interest. These are currently being extensively examined again in terms of textile archeology and costume studies.

dress

The clothing was scientifically evaluated at the end of the 1950s by Karl Schlabow, who interpreted the outer garment as a roughly knee-length dress made of light, fine sheep's wool . The fabric of the dress was laid in folds on the front and back, which were sewn at the level below the shoulders and ran down to the lower hem at knee level . The effect of the moor acid has now turned the wool brown. Traces of linen residue on the coffin floor and the body of the corpse indicate underwear. If the evidence of flax fibers in the coffin is confirmed, this would be one of the rare finds of linen fabric from a bog. Further wool residues on the lower body, the crotch and the thighs suggest another, possibly trouser-like , undergarment made of light woolen fabric. The current investigations will clarify whether the findings so far can be confirmed. The woman wore a two-tone, approximately 18 mm wide hair band around her head using the tablet weaving technique , which has been preserved in two parts, 37 and 23 cm.

Boots

The high leather boots, which are not typical of the time of the find area, are a specialty . The footwear referred to as riding boots was manufactured in a careful and elaborate shoemaker's work. They are unique in quality and state of preservation from this time in Central Europe. The cylinder-shaped shaft is made of soft kid leather , the edge is cut diagonally at the top and has reinforcements sewn into the inside. The sole, upper part of the foot, insole and sewn-in caps on the heels are made of light brown cowhide . The suture material made of twisted flax threads had passed through the moor acid and the boots could be recovered from the corpse in individual parts. The shoe sole has a length of 23 cm and corresponds to a modern shoe size 36. The dating to the 8th to 9th centuries AD, made by Günter Gall from the German Leather Museum in Offenbach am Main on the basis of photos and drawings at the end of the 1950s its attribution to an Eastern European equestrian or shepherd people was refuted due to the new dating to the late Middle Ages. This re-dating raises further questions, however, since boots with such high shafts are not yet known in late medieval women's fashion in southern Germany. The current assessment of the boots also showed that they were not, as originally suspected, new and specially made for the burial. Signs of wear and a patch on the right boot showed that they had been worn for a long time during their lifetime.

coffin

The wood of the coffin was in excellent condition. The 183 cm long coffin box has a width of about 34 to 36 cm at the foot end, about 35 to 39 cm at the head end and has a height of 37 cm, whereby its width tapers slightly towards the bottom. The boards of the coffin box were sawn to a thickness of 4 to 4.5 cm and are made of spruce wood ( Picea abies ). Head and foot boards are almost square in shape. The boards were carefully joined together with round dowels about 2.5 cm long and an average 1.4 cm in diameter made of ash wood ( Fraxinus excelsior ). The boards came from a tree trunk at least 50 cm in diameter. At the foot of the coffin there is damage caused by the shovel of the peat excavator. The side boards of the coffin box and the lid have drill holes about 3 cm in diameter at all four corners, which were drilled through boards at an angle from above. During the first scientific investigation, remnants of willow or bast fibers were found in the holes , and shavings were also found inside the coffin, which presumably came from the manufacture. In 2007, the coffin wood was at the Institute of Wood Biology and protection of the Hamburger Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute and the Center for Wood Science of the University of Hamburg wood biologically investigated. The types of wood used in the coffin box were corrected microscopically and electron microscopically for spruce wood, which was referred to as pine wood during the first investigations in 1957 . Traces of degradation by bacteria on the organic material were observed on the wood, which appeared lighter on the spruce boards and more pronounced on the wood of the ash dowels. However, this degradation process took place before the coffin was sunk in the moor and was completely stopped by the subsequent storage in the acid moor. According to the scientists, the coffin was the work of an experienced carpenter due to the selected types of wood and the clean craftsmanship . They contradicted the earlier view that the coffin was being put together in a hurry. The chemical analyzes of the wood samples revealed high concentrations of the heavy metals zinc , copper and chromium , which probably came from the preservatives of the 1950s. The increased concentrations of aluminum and iron , on the other hand, were brought into the wood through the long storage in the acid moor. The fabric that was glued to the floor inside the coffin during the conservation work made it difficult to examine the wood connections between the floor and side boards, but it was not removed during the more recent tests.

Dating

After a first inspection by the excavation technicians Titze and Schlabow, a dating to the Middle Ages was assumed in 1957, whereas Gall of the Offenbach Leather Museum dated the boots to the 8th or 9th century AD The C14 analysis carried out by the University of Cologne in 1965 showed an age of 1110 ± 80 years BP . Using the more recent calibration data from 2007, this sample gives an age of 840 ± 80 BP, which corresponds to a period from 1087 to 1247 AD. Since the old dating of the coffin wood sample seemed too uncertain, a sample from the tissue of the corpse at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg was dated to an age of 552 ± 44 years BP ¹⁴ C using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) . According to this, the woman died with a 95.4% probability in the period between 1290 and 1370 or between 1380 and 1440 AD, i.e. in the late Middle Ages . Due to the large difference between the two ¹⁴ C dates, a new AMS dating of the coffin wood is in progress.

interpretation

The special burial in the moor away from a local cemetery in connection with the pregnancy symptoms described and the high riding boots led to numerous attempts at interpretation. The burial of an alleged woman who had recently given birth in the moor led to the assumption that she gave birth to a child out of wedlock before her sudden death. Another theory suggested the reason in medieval church teachings , according to which women who had recently given birth could not be buried in blessed earth. Due to the lack of any jewelry, it was assumed that the deceased did not have an exceptionally high status in her social environment. However, the exceptionally good nutritional status and the relatively good general health of the deceased speak against this. In stark contrast to the very elaborately crafted boots is their simple and unadorned clothing. Since the grave was near an old boardwalk, it was assumed that she might have been a stranger or a traveler. The origin of the boots was suspected by Günter Gall from the German Leather Museum from one of the Central Eastern European equestrian and shepherd peoples. The results of a current strontium isotope analysis support at least the theory that the woman did not grow up in the immediate vicinity of the site. According to the latest research results, the geographical orientation of the coffin and the position of the arms of the woman correspond to the general Christian burial rite of the late Middle Ages in the region; accordingly, the corpse was not "disposed of", but rather properly and respectfully buried. Whether an unusual appearance due to the overbite, a stranger to the place or an unnatural death were the reasons for her burial away from a proper cemetery can possibly be narrowed down by further investigations.

Improbable theories

According to a theory put forward by Karl Schlabow, there was still a body of water at the burial site at the time of the burial. Ropes with weight stones were tied through the holes in the coffin so that the coffin would not float up again. The coffin is said to have been sunk from a boat. Over time, the ropes at the head end and later the ropes at the foot end should have rotted away, which is why the coffin first stood up with the head end and later rose completely to the surface of the water. As a result, parts of the head and the forearms that are crossed in front of the chest are said not to have been surrounded by bog water and consequently poorly preserved. The moor gradually silted up and more and more material was deposited in the water, so that the coffin was finally about 50 cm below the surface of the terrain at the time it was found. This theory must be considered refuted, since neither the excavation in 1957 nor the subsequent excavation in 1962 found suitable stones. The reason for the different state of preservation of the body can also be based on localized, slight differences in the chemical composition of the moor liquid, which favored the decomposition process in certain parts of the body. It is unlikely that the woman was possibly Jewish . Above all, the position of her arms and the timbered coffin speak against this. A DNA analysis will try to clarify a possible Jewish ancestry.

Trivia

An old superstition says that women who had recently given birth would look after the child for six weeks, so they had to be buried with new shoes, otherwise their shuffling steps would have been heard.

literature

• Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, Klaus Püschel: The woman from the moor - Part 1 . In: Commission for Bavarian State History (Hrsg.): Bavarian history sheets . No. 74 . Beck, 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-11079-5 , ISSN  0341-3918 , p. 239-268, panels 15-23 .
• Matthias Rehbein, Gerald Koch, Peter Klein: Moor corpse "Frau von Peiting". Wood biological findings from the coffin . In: Restauro - forum for restorers, conservators and preservationists . No. 5 , 2009, ISSN  0933-4017 , p. 320-325 .
• Inge Linfert-Reich: The wife of Peiting . In: Historical museums of the city of Cologne (Hrsg.): Kölner Römer-Illustrierte . 1975, ISSN  0179-5511 , p. 290-291 .
• Karl Schlabow : The bog body find from Peiting (Schongau district in Upper Bavaria) . In: Publications of the Förderverein Textilmuseum Neumünster e. V. No. 2 . Wachholz, Neumünster 1961 (first publication).
• Angela Dopfer-Werner: My name is Afra . CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN 978-1-4839-3120-3 (novel on this occasion).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Schlotterer-Fuchs: Rosalinde: Does it belong to Peiting or Hohenpeißenberg? In: Weiheimer Tagblatt local section Schongau. January 27, 2010, accessed November 30, 2011 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Barbara Schlotterer-Fuchs: Moor corpse Rosalinde: the riddle in leather boots. In: Weiheimer Tagblatt local section Schongau. January 12, 2010, accessed November 30, 2011 . 
3. ↑ Bavarian Moor and Peat Museum
4. ↑ ^{a b} Guinevere Granite, Andreas Bauerochse: Analysis of the Peiting Woman Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy . In: Chronica . No. 3 . Institute for European Mediterranean Archeology, 2013, ISSN  2159-9904 , p. 55–66 (English, online [PDF; 690 kB ]).
5. ^ ^{A b} Karl Schlabow : The moor body find from Peiting (Schongau district in Upper Bavaria) . In: Publications of the Förderverein Textilmuseum Neumünster e. V. No. 2 . Wachholz, Neumünster 1961 (first publication).
6. ↑ Boots of the "Moor corpse of Peiting". In: bavarikon . Retrieved July 11, 2017 . 
7. ^ Matthias Rehbein, Gerald Koch, Peter Klein: Wood biological finds from the coffin of the "Frau von Peiting" . In: Commission for Bavarian State History (Hrsg.): Bavarian history sheets . No. 74 . Beck, 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-11079-5 , ISSN  0341-3918 , p. 269-278 .
8. ^ Matthias Rehbein, Gerald Koch, Peter Klein: Moor corpse "Frau von Peiting". Wood biological findings from the coffin . In: Restauro - forum for restorers, conservators and preservationists . No. 5 , 2009, ISSN  0933-4017 , p. 320-325 .

• Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, Klaus Püschel: The woman from the moor - Part 1 . In: Commission for Bavarian State History (Hrsg.): Bavarian history sheets . No. 74 . Beck, 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-11079-5 , ISSN  0341-3918 .

1. ↑ p. 243.
2. ↑ pp. 241-242.
3. ↑ p. 267.
4. ↑ Note 13.
5. ↑ p. 246.
6. ↑ pp. 248-249.
7. ↑ Note No. 36.

Web links

• Moor and man. Rosalinde, a medieval bog body find from Peiting. In: Chiemgau leaves. 2002, accessed on April 27, 2013 (edition 17/2002). 
• Angela Dopfer-Werner: My name is Afra. Retrieved on November 30, 2011 (pictures of the bog corpse as it was found and after conservation). 
• Bavarian Moor and Peat Museum. Museum Association Torfbahnhof Rottau e. V., accessed on April 9, 2012 (Rottau peat museum with the model of the find). 
• Hans Kratzer: Rosalinde from the moor. Sueddeutsche Zeitung, accessed on February 27, 2012 (article with photo). 
• Boots of the "bog body of Peiting". In: bavarikon . Retrieved July 11, 2017 (high resolution photography of the boots).