bog body

bog body

Any of an informal collection of some 700 variously preserved human remains found over the past 200 years in natural peat bogs, mostly in western Europe. The bodies, including the soft tissues and the stomach contents, remain preserved because of the anaerobic fluid conditions in the bogs. They range chronologically from c. 8000 BC to early medieval times. That they have been variously found with cut throats, severed limbs, ropes around the neck, and so on suggests the possibility of ritual killings, murders, and ignominious burial (since none was found within a proper grave).