Man from Obenaltendorf
The man from above Altendorf is the bog body of a man from the 3rd century, the May 1895 during peat-cutting in Kehdinger Moor in the top Altendorf, community East (Oste) in the district of Cuxhaven , Lower Saxony was found. In the specialist literature, the place is often incorrectly referred to as Oberaltendorf .
The remains of the man from Obenaltendorf are exhibited today in the Schwedenspeicher Museum in Stade .
Finding circumstances
On May 24, 1895, a worker came across the body while cutting peat . Believing it was an animal carcass, he cut it up with the spade and first threw the lower half of the body aside. As he continued digging, he came across clothing and hair and saw the human remains. The teacher H. Meyer, who teaches in the nearby schoolhouse, found out about the find and immediately hurried from class to the site. He examined the uncovered remains, recognized the historical significance of the find, had the site cordoned off and collected the parts lying around. In several days of work, since no one wanted to help him, he dug up the cut pieces of corpse and clothing on his own and then hid them. Meyer also observed and noted further details in the immediate vicinity of the corpse during his excavation, such as parts of heather plants that normally no longer occur at this depth. Some of these parts of the plant showed their underside upwards, which may indicate upturned clumps of earth from a burial of the body. After the excavation, Meyer sold waistbands, clothes and trailers to the master watchmaker Jarck, the director of the museum in Stade. Three weeks later, Meyer was still digging at the site on his own and unearthing more remains of clothing, bones and soft tissues. For one day only Prof. Carl Albert Weber from the Prussian Moor Research Station in Bremen came by, took a few photographs and took peat samples from the site for pollen analysis. The Stader museum director Jarck asked the Landesmuseum Hannover for help with the conservation of the acquired body parts and textiles, but there were no options there and he was referred to Ludwig Lindenschmit from the Germanic Museum in Mainz, where he finally sent the shoes and clothes for conservation.
Location: 53 ° 43 ′ 44 ″ N , 9 ° 16 ′ 8 ″ E
The whereabouts of the individual body parts can no longer be reliably reconstructed from the existing files. Meyer tried in vain to sell the body to the Provincial Museum in Hanover. For reasons that can no longer be ascertained, a trader acquired the skeleton of the bog body a short time later, which he presumably processed into mumia . It wasn't until 1919 that some other parts of the body reappeared.
Findings
The older man's corpse was about 2 m below the surface in a south-north orientation on the right side with knees slightly drawn up. Due to the circumstances prior to the rescue, the corpse is divided into many parts. However, the skin remaining on the parts of the body is tough and intact and brown in color. The soft tissues and bones of the corpse, flattened by the pressure of the ground, have turned into a white sebum-like mass due to the moor acids . The half-long, deep-blonde, almost reddish hair on the man's head, with a little bald head, is particularly well preserved. The man's beard is shaved short and his chin was shaved just a few days before he died. Since teacher Meyer described the skin of the corpse as so tough that he could not cut it with a sharp pocket knife, it can be assumed that the corpse had already been lying near the cut edge in the peat for a long time and was already somewhat dried out when it was found. A note from the Stader museum director Jarck to the Landesmuseum Hannover provides information about the size of the man, according to which the skeleton was 7 feet long, about 2 meters, this information could be confirmed by calculations of a preserved, 50 cm long thigh bone. When it was found and 15 years later, the bones of the left leg showed signs of possible suppuration, but this could no longer be reliably confirmed.
The deceased was originally only covered by a thin layer of bog plague, after his burial the raised bog grew 2 to 3 m higher above him.
dress
The man from Obenaltendorf came into the moor with all his clothes made of finely woven wool and shoes, which were cut several times by cutting peat. He was dressed in a sleeveless smock, breeches and calf wraps around his legs. These clothes give a rare insight into the fashion of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. All textiles were woven in plain weave. The man was wrapped in a wool coat measuring 173 × 253 cm . The coat did not have a special beginning or end edge of the fabric, the warp threads hanging out were twisted into 5 cm long fringes. About 1 cm from the beginning and end edge there is a 1 cm wide web of darker wool. The sleeveless smock was adorned with three woven, darker stripes at the top and bottom. The remains of the trousers were the most difficult to identify, initially mistaken for a pair of trousers, then a bag, pouch, cap or sleeve, and finally identified as trousers. It was carefully sewn, but had many weaving defects and had two originally blue horizontal stripes woven into each leg. These horizontal stripes began and ended not at the edge of the fabric, but in the fabric. The fabric of the trousers had a hole that was already closed with a patch during the man's lifetime, as shown by seam marks in the woolen fabric. The sewing thread of the patch was most likely made of linen and has passed in the acidic moor environment. The patch itself is also no longer preserved. The two bandages each had a length of 75 cm and widths between 14.5 and 17 cm. They were woven together on a piece of cloth and cut lengthways from the cloth. Both bandages have selvedges on one side and serged cut edges on the other sides. Clear signs of wear and creases in the fabric made it possible to reliably reconstruct how the bandages were worn.
The feet were in bundle shoes that had been cut from a piece of hairy hide. The waistband shoes were closed with a band pulled together by numerous fine tabs over the foot. The outer soles of the shoes were worn through and repaired with under-sewn leather patches, the seams of the patches were carefully countersunk to protect the seam from wear. Some tabs on the shoes were decorated with punched patterns.
Jewellery
The only metal objects the man had with him were two small, approx. 1.5 cm large, capsule pendants made of sheet silver, similar to the Roman bullae . They consist of an eight-shaped, bent sheet of silver into which a narrow strip of sheet of silver is soldered with a yellow solder. The handles of the capsules are decorated on one side with embossed stripes and cross lines. How these trailers were worn can no longer be reconstructed.
Dating
The first dating, which was valid for a long time, was done by Hans Hahne . Based on comparative finds from northern Germany, he typologically dated the two silver capsules to around 200 AD. A 14 C-AMS dating of some of the man's hair and some wool threads from his clothing revealed a time of death between 260 and 380 AD.
Smock
Rectangular jacket
interpretation
It remains a mystery why the man was buried about 4 kilometers away from the next settlement, today's Altendorf, which at that time had its own burial place. A violent killing of the man can be ruled out due to the circumstances of the find, as he was buried in a pit with all his clothes and two valuable jewelry pendants wrapped in his coat.
literature
- Hans Hahne : The bog body from Obenaltendorf, Kr. Neuhaus ad O. In: Prehistoric finds from Lower Saxony . VI Delivery 4/5. Hildesheim 1919.
- Alfred Dieck : The bog body from Obenaltendorf near Stade . In: Stader Geschichts- und Heimatverein (Hrsg.): Stader yearbook. NF . tape 73 , 1983, ISSN 0930-8946 .
- Susan Möller-Wiering: Italian fashion in the Stader Moor? In: Frank M. Andraschko, Barbara Kraus, Birte Meller (Hrsg.): Archeology between findings and reconstruction . Kovač, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8300-2711-9 .
- 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).
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Hahne : The bog body from Obenaltendorf, Kr. Neuhaus ad O. In: Prehistoric finds from Lower Saxony . VI Delivery 4/5. Hildesheim 1919, p. Plate XX, fig. 5 .
- ↑ 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]).
Web links
- C. Oellerich: The bog body find from Obenaltendorf. In: An article by C. Oellerich in the "Chronik des Kirchspiels Osten". Retrieved October 2, 2009 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Man from Obenaltendorf |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Obi |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Bog corpse |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 3rd century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 3rd century |
| Place of death | at east (east) |