Man from Worsley Moss

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The man of Worsley Moss ( English Worsley Man ) is the head of a bog corpse that was discovered in 1958 in a moor of Chat Moss near the city of Salford in Greater Manchester , England . The body to the head was not found. The man from Worsley Moss is kept in the Manchester Museum .

The moor

Find

On August 18, 1958, peat cutters discovered a severed head on the moor at Chat Moss near Worsley and called the police. At first the police suspected a recent crime and had an area of ​​more than 100 hectares in the vicinity of the site searched in vain for further body parts. The head was given to the University of Liverpool for an initial assessment the next day . Dr. A. St. Hill assumed due to the relatively good preservation that it was less than a year in the bog and belonged to a 24 to 40 year old man of oriental descent. The head was passed on to the home office in Chorley for further forensic examination . Dr. GB Manning examined the submitted parts on August 24th. After various radiological and chemical tests, Manning confirmed that the man had died 100 to 500 years ago. He also supported his findings by pointing out the conservation properties of moors and the Danish finds of the Tollund man and the Grauballe man , which had not yet been published extensively in England. Based on these findings, the suspicion of a crime was lifted and the responsible medical examiner placed the body parts in the custody of the Manchester Medical School at the University of Manchester . There the head was kept in an acrylic glass cabinet. Only the discovery of the Lindow man in 1984 in the nearby Lindow Bog area aroused renewed interest in bog bodies and the head of the Worsley man. Location: 53 ° 27 '46.4 "  N , 2 ° 25' 53.8"  W Coordinates: 53 ° 27 '46.4 "  N , 2 ° 25' 53.8"  W.

Findings

The head is still present in larger fragments. The skull shows several large fractures, the skull bones are no longer completely present and were partially connected with a metal wire during the first examinations. The first cervical vertebra is complete and the second only fragmentary. On the right side of the skull there are larger, dark brown discolored remnants of soft tissue, including the completely deformed ear and some reddish brown discolored scalp hair. The lower jaw is broken. The second molar in the upper right and the first molar in the lower right are preserved in the jaws .

A renewed examination in 1987 revealed an approximately 28 cm long wound behind the right ear, fractures in the left temple area with cracks reaching far into the skull, caused by blows with a blunt object, and cuts on the cervical vertebrae where the head was removed from the body was separated. Choking marks and remnants of a tendon cord around the neck indicate strangulation. The cord consists of two twisted tendons or ligaments from an animal that has not yet been identified. The end of the cord now runs partly upwards between the soft tissue and the skull bone on the right side of the head. The remnants of the soft tissue that have been preserved show a cut through which the man's throat was opened. A high-resolution CT scan of the skull in 2014 discovered a pointed object stuck deep in the neck. It is most likely a long, thin arrowhead or spearhead made of bone (bone or antler) that broke off after the sting and remained in the wound. However, some of these injuries could only have been inflicted on him after death , or it could have been caused by storage in the bog and the pressure of the surrounding soil. The tooth pockets in the upper and lower jaw indicated that the man's dentition with all 32 teeth was fully formed when the man died. The dental status and a close examination of the two preserved molars suggest that he was between 20 and 30 years old when he died. The two teeth preserved were free of caries and periodontitis and showed no signs of wear. They are discolored dark brown due to storage in the bog. The acidic moor environment has dissolved the enamel layers and parts of the dentin layers so that the teeth now appear smaller.

The radiocarbon dating ( 14 C-dating) of a sample obtained from the soft tissues of the head showed a death time of 1800 ± 70 BP , ie in the Roman Empire to 120 n. Chr.

interpretation

The chronological classification of the find suggests that the head of the representative of a Romano-British Celt was present. The injury patterns as well as the cause of death all together point to a ritual killing or sacrifice of the man, possibly as part of a Celtic skull cult. For a ritual sacrifice and the 2014 discovered arrow or spearhead talks in the neck of the man who clearly for a multiple murder in connection with the other injuries (or English overkill , over killing ' ) speaks, as it is also seen in many other bog bodies . Accidental death can be ruled out with these findings as almost certain. This find shows clear parallels to the Lindow man found only 20 km away , who lived during the same period and was killed in a similar way.

literature

  • 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).
  • Stephanie Pain: The Head from Worsley Moss . In: New Scientist . No. 2414 . Reed Business Information, ISSN  0262-4079 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ TO Garland: Worsley Man, England . In: Richard C. Turner; Robert G. Scaife (Ed.): Bog Bodies - New Discoveries and New Perspectives . British Museum Press, London 1995, ISBN 0-7141-2305-6 , pp. 104-107 (English).
  2. ^ TO Garland: Worsley Man, England . In: Richard C. Turner, Robert G. Scaife (Eds.): Bog Bodies - New Discoveries and New Perspectives . British Museum Press, London 1995, ISBN 0-7141-2305-6 , pp. 104 ( streetmap.co.uk - Indicated as “Chat Moss” general grid reference SD70SW).
  3. ^ A b c Stephanie Pain: The Head from Worsley Moss . In: New Scientist . No. 2414 . Reed Business Information, ISSN  0262-4079 (English).
  4. ↑ a b Charlotte Cox: Groundbreaking scan reveals evidence of ritual human sacrifice ... in Salford . In: Manchester Evening News . May 16, 2014 (English, manchestereveningnews.co.uk [accessed May 27, 2016]).
  5. ↑ Such as B. with the bog bodies: Clonycavan man , Grauballe man , Lindow man , Old Croghan man or the Tollund man
personal data
SURNAME Man from Worsley Moss
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Worsley Man (English)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bog corpse
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century or 2nd century
DATE OF DEATH at 120
Place of death near Salford , England