Bog corpse from the Rieper Moor

Coordinates: 53 ° 14 ′ 24.7 ″  N , 9 ° 36 ′ 13.9 ″  E

Bog corpse from the Rieper Moor​

Lower Saxony

The bog body from the Rieper Moor (also Stemmen FStNr. 17 ) was a bog body , which in 1754 in Königsmoor (name at that time Rieper Moor ) near the border of Lower Saxony tostedt and Vahlder hamlet Riepe was found. The find is considered to be the second oldest documented bog body find in Germany.

Reference

Map section with name of the place of discovery

In 1722 the area was called Todtholzmoor or Rieper Moor, after the coupling in 1860, most of the area went to the Kingdom of Hanover and was given the current name Königsmoor. The location was noted on the Lauenbrück topographic map of the Kurhannoversche Landesaufnahme from 1764 to 1786 with a cross and the entry:

"Where a dead body was found in 1754, and taken away and buried by Amt Zewen."

- Topographic map Lauenbrück No. 29 of the Kurhannoverschen Landesaufnahme from 1764 to 1786

Accordingly, the location was in the northwestern part of the Rieper Moor near the Vahlder district of Riepe in the Lower Saxony district of Rotenburg (Wümme) and near the border with the district of Königsmoor of the Tostedt municipality in the Harburg district .

Find history

The bog corpse was found in 1754 by a peat cutter not known by name at a depth of one meter below the bog surface . In Zeven the body was then by surgeons rather medically examined, and finally a crime has been excluded. The remains were then buried in the Zeven cemetery. Since the files on the find have been lost, Hans Müller-Brauel made a memorandum of the most important details in 1911. Then the corpse lay face down in the moor and was covered with a tree or branch as thick as an arm. Presumably only parts of the skin were preserved from the corpse itself . A cap, leather shoes "of a shape you can't see anywhere today" ( unknown author ) and a cloak -like cape were found on the corpse . Müller-Brauel passed on some fragments of the coat to the local researcher August Bachmann. The mortal remains of the bog body and its clothing were considered lost for a long time, until Stefan Hesse rediscovered the textile fragments that had been handed over to Bachmann in the storage room of the Bachmann Museum in Bremervörde Castle in 2009 .

Findings

Of the bog corpse from the Rieper Moor itself and its clothing, only the two textile fragments of the presumed coat still exist today. The fragments are made of sheep's wool and have been discolored brown due to long storage in the acidic moor environment. Both fragments are woven in a weft rep weave. Fragment I measures 63 × 18 mm and has 9-10 warp threads per centimeter and 20-24 weft threads per centimeter. The thread thicknesses are 0.4-0.8 mm for warp and 0.2-0.6 mm for weft threads. Fragment II measures 39 × 40 mm, with 6-7 warp threads and 20 weft threads per centimeter, with thread sizes of 0.3-0.6 mm of the warp and 0.5-0.9 mm of the weft threads. The warp threads are irregularly thick, the weft threads twisted more easily in the Z direction . The surfaces of the two fabrics appear worn and felted in places , which suggests that the clothing will last longer. A textile archaeological investigation on the State Conservation Office Baden-Wuerttemberg in Esslingen by Christina Peek resulted due to the binding of the tissue to believe that the cloth of Roman production, or from the contact zones of the Roman Empire came from, or that it is a local imitation of such a cloth.

Dating

A dating was impossible due to the previous find and tradition and it was only the discovery of the textile fragments in 2010 that a scientific dating of the find was possible for the first time . The ¹⁴ C-AMS dating of some tissue threads at the isotope laboratory of the University of Erlangen resulted in a calibrated dating to the time around 253–348 AD.

interpretation

Neither the cause of death nor the gender can be determined with certainty due to the missing body parts. The prone position of the body described in Müller-Brauel's memory log, with the branch or tree trunk placed over the corpse, indicate that the corpse was laid down in the moor. An accidental death can be almost certainly excluded under the current circumstances. Whether the deceased received a special burial in the bog or was buried there as a victim of a crime can no longer be determined with certainty on the basis of the available data.

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. 54–68 .
• Thomas Brock: Bog bodies. Witnesses of past millennia . In: Archeology in Germany, special issue . Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8062-2205-0 .
• 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. 39, 48 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
• Sabine Eisenbeiß: Reports on bog bodies from Lower Saxony in the estate of Alfred Dieck . Archaeological Institute, Hamburg 1992, p. 42–45 (master's thesis).
• Alfred Dieck : The not yet recovered bog body from Bonstorf, Celle district, from 1450 and the bog body from Rieper Moor, Rotenburg district (Hanover), found in 1751 . In: Lower Saxony Regional Association for Prehistory (ed.): The customer NF . No. 8 , 1957, ISSN  0342-0736 , p. 274-284 .

Web links

• Wieland Bonath: bog corpse sorted by time. (online) District archaeologist Dr. Stefan Hesse presents the results of the find in the Rieper Bauernmoor. In: Kreiszeitung.de. November 19, 2010, accessed February 7, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Stefan Hesse, Silke Grefen-Peters, Christina Peek, Jennifer Rech, Ulrich Schliemann: The moor 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. 54-68 .
2. ↑ Thomas Brock: Moor corpses. Witnesses of past millennia . In: Archeology in Germany, special issue . Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 3-8062-2205-3 , p. 19-20 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Topographic map Lauenbrück map copy 29, Kurhannoversche Landesaufnahme from 1764 to 1786.
4. ↑ Alfred Dieck, on the other hand, published several times the year of discovery 1751, which was adopted by numerous subsequent authors, including Wijnand van der Sanden and Thomas Brock.
5. ^ 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. 39 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
6. ↑ Probe Erl-14457: 1730 ± 40 Before Present ; δ ¹³ C = -25.7; 253-348 calAD (62.7%), 368-378 calAD (5.6%)