Osterby Man or the Osterby Head is a bog body of which only the skull and hair survived. It was discovered in 1948 by peat cutters to the southeast of Osterby, Germany. The hair is tied in a Suebian knot. The head is at the State Archaeological Museum at Gottorf Castle in Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein.
The head was discovered on 26 May 1948 by Otto and Max Müller of Osterby, who were cutting peat on their father's land, at 54°26′51″N09°46′09″E / 54.44750°N 9.76917°E . [1] It was found approximately 65 to 70 centimetres (2 ft 2 in to 2 ft 4 in) beneath the current ground level. The head was wrapped in fragments of a deerskin cape, which Max Müller noticed protruding from the peat. The find was reported to the museum in Schleswig; despite intensive searching by the brothers and others, no more of the body has been found. [2]
The skull was wrapped in fragments of a deerskin cape and had been damaged by being struck with a blunt object before it was sunk in the bog.
The skull had been broken into several pieces. The acids in the bog have decalcified the bone, which has shrunk somewhat and is dark brown. The hair and small sections of scalp are well preserved, [3] but the skin and other soft tissues of the face have disappeared. There is a large wound on the left side of the head, which may have been fatal: the skull had been depressed by a blow with a blunt object over an area approximately 12 centimetres (4.7 in) in diameter, and the bone of the left temple was shattered with splinters penetrating the brain area. [4] [5] The skull had also been deformed by the weight of the peat above it, but the facial area was generally well preserved. Skeletal evidence suggests a man 50 to 60 years of age. Hack marks on the second cervical vertebra show that the head was cut off. [4] The skull was stabilised for exhibition by filling with gypsum.
The hair is thin and slightly wavy, 28 centimetres (11 in) long. It had been coloured a reddish brown by the acids in the bog; microscopic analysis showed that it had been dark blond and that the man had had some white hairs. [6] In a re-examination in 2005, isotopic analysis showed that at least during his last year of life, the man ate meat remarkably rarely, and did not eat seafood. Parasitological analysis of the hair showed no head lice, unusual for the time. [7]
The hair is unusually well preserved and is tied above the right temple in a Suebian knot. Tacitus describes this in Chapter 38 of his Germania as a characteristic of free men among the Germanic tribe of Suebi. [8] The knot appears in several Roman depictions and on at least one other bog body, Dätgen Man (who wore his on the back of his head). [9] Osterby has featured the Suebian knot on its coat of arms since 1998. [10]
The skull was wrapped in fragments of a garment, measuring approximately 40 by 53 centimetres (16 by 21 in), consisting of tanned pieces of leather sewn together. Microscopic analysis suggested, based on the hairs, that they were from roe deer. The neck opening was lined with a strip of leather about 1 centimetre (0.39 in) wide. All seams had been sewn with small stitches in catgut. Some appeared to be repairs. Textile archaeologists identified the garment as a skin cape; similar cloaks or capes have been found with other archaeological finds, including Elling Woman, Haraldskær Woman, Dröbnitz Girl, Kayhausen Boy and Jührdenerfeld Man.
Peter Löhr performed the anthropological analysis, which determined that the skull had shrunk while immersed in the bog. For his doctoral dissertation, he performed experiments on it involving repeated soaking and drying and detailed measurements; in his view, soaking caused it to swell to almost its original dimensions. [11] Löhr's data included markedly shrunk teeth and the complete lower jaw associated with the skull, which has a protruding chin. However, more recent analysis has shown that in his original preparation of the skull for exhibition, Karl Schlabow added an unrelated lower jaw. [12]
The Suebian knot indicates the man died in the Late Iron Age or the Roman period, and radiocarbon dating likewise indicates a date between 75 and 130 CE; [13] [14] however, the hair sample used was taken from Alfred Dieck's private collection and may thus be unreliable. [15]
Other Iron Age bog bodies have also been beheaded; [4] the body of Dätgen Man, who also had a Suebian knot, was found several metres from his head. The beheading together with the fractured skull indicates deliberate execution by multiple methods. It is impossible to determine whether Osterby Man was sunk in the bog as a judicial punishment or a sacrifice, or whether his body was also deposited in the bog, but it has been suggested that his relatively advanced age may indicate an honourable death. [16]
Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate the study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
The Tollund Man is a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 5th century BCE, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body near Silkeborg on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. The man's physical features were so well preserved that he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. Twelve years before his discovery, another bog body, Elling Woman, was found in the same bog.
A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between 8000 BC and the Second World War. The unifying factor of the bog bodies is that they have been found in peat and are partially preserved; however, the actual levels of preservation vary widely from perfectly preserved to mere skeletons.
Yde Girl is a bog body found in the Stijfveen peat bog near the village of Yde, Netherlands. She was found on 12 May 1897 and was reputedly uncannily well-preserved when discovered, but by the time the body was turned over to the authorities two weeks later, it had been severely damaged and deteriorated. Most of her teeth and hair had been pulled from the skull. The peat-cutting tools had also been reported to have severely damaged the body.
The Haraldskær Woman is the name given to a bog body of a woman preserved in a bog in Jutland, Denmark, and dating from about 490 BC. Workers found the body in 1835 while excavating peat on the Haraldskær Estate. The anaerobic conditions and acids of the peat bog contributed to the body's excellent preservation. Not only was the intact skeleton found, but so were the skin and internal organs. Scientists settled disputes about the age and identity of this well-preserved body in 1977, when radiocarbon dating determined conclusively that the woman's death occurred around the 5th century BC.
The Suebian knot is a historical male hairstyle ascribed to the tribe of the Germanic Suebi. The knot is attested by Tacitus in his 1st century AD work Germania, found on contemporary depictions of Germanic peoples, their art, and bog bodies.
Windeby I is the name given to the bog body found preserved in a peat bog near Windeby, Northern Germany, in 1952. Until recently, the body was also called the Windeby Girl, since an archaeologist believed it to be the body of a 14-year-old girl, because of its slight build. Professor Heather Gill-Robinson, a Canadian anthropologist and pathologist, used DNA testing to show the body was actually that of a sixteen-year-old boy. The body has been radiocarbon-dated to between 41 BC and 118 AD.
Osterby is a municipality in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is mostly rural.
The Borremose bodies are three bog bodies that were found in the Borremose peat bog in Himmerland, Denmark. Recovered between 1946 and 1948, the bodies of a man and two women have been dated to the Nordic Bronze Age. In 1891, the Gundestrup cauldron was found in a nearby bog.
Stoneyisland Man is the name given to a bog body discovered in the Stoneyisland Bog, Gortanumera, County Galway, Ireland on 13 May 1929.
Damendorf Man is a German bog body discovered in 1900 in the See Moor at the village of Damendorf in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Johanna Mestorf was a German prehistoric archaeologist, the first female museum director in the Kingdom of Prussia and usually said to be the first female professor in Germany.
Alfred Dieck was a German archaeologist internationally recognised for the scientific studies on bog bodies and bog finds. Since the early 1990s, the results of his scientific work have been critically reviewed and found to be wrong in major parts.
The Wittmoor bog trackway is the name given to each of two historic corduroy roads, trackway No. I being discovered in 1898 and trackway No. II in 1904 in the Wittmoor bog in northern Hamburg, Germany. The trackways date to the 4th and 7th century AD, both linked the eastern and western shores of the formerly inaccessible, swampy bog. A part of the older trackway No. II dating to the period of the Roman Empire is on display at the permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg in Harburg, Hamburg.
Dr. Wijnand Antonius Bernardus van der Sanden is a Dutch archaeologist and prehistorian.
The Braak Bog Figures are two wooden carvings discovered in 1947 in a peat bog in Braak, Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany. Part of a larger tradition of similar figures spanning the period from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, they are human-like in appearance and have been carbon dated to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE; the Schleswig-Holstein state archaeology museum puts them as far back as 400BCE. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain their function and what they may represent, from depictions of deities to ancestor worship.
Anthropomorphic Iron Age wooden cult figures, sometimes called pole gods, have been found at many archaeological sites in Central and Northern Europe. They are generally interpreted as cult images, in some cases presumably depicting deities, sometimes with either a votive or an apotropaic (protective) function. Many have been preserved in peat bogs. The majority are crudely worked poles or forked sticks; some take the form of carved planks. They have been dated to periods from the Mesolithic to the Early Middle Ages, including the Roman Era and the Migration Age. The majority have been found in areas of Germanic settlement, but some are from areas of Celtic settlement and from the later part of the date range, Slavic settlement. A typology has been developed based on the large number found at Oberdorla, Thuringia, at a sacrificial bog which is now the Opfermoor Vogtei open-air museum.
Karl Schlabow was a German archaeologist, museum director and conservator with specialisations in textiles and in restoration of bog bodies. He founded the Neumünster Textile Museum. Since his death, his restorations have been called into question as overly aggressive.
Osterby may refer to: