Bog Biographies: Combining high spatial and chronological resolution ecological modelling for understanding societal and cultural resilience
Funder
The project is funded by an APEX (Academies Partnership in Supporting Excellence in Cross-disciplinary Research) award in partnership with the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society and with generous support from the Leverhulme Trust.
Project team
Co-leads:
Henry Chapman (University of Birmingham)
David Smith (University of Birmingham)
Maarten Blaauw (Queen’s University Belfast)
Collaborators
Nina Helt Nielsen, Museum Silkeborg, Denmark
Bjarne Henning Nielsen, Vesthimmerlands Museum, Denmark
Torben Birk Sarauw, Nordjyske Museer, Denmark
Morten Fischer Mortensen and Peter Steen Henriksen, National Museum of Denmark
Natural England, Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve
Value to Coventry University
£64,856.65
Total Value of Project
£199,990.57
Duration
October 2025 - September 2027
Project overview
Iron Age ‘bog bodies’ have fascinated scholars and the public alike for over two centuries due to their exceptional preservation. Research has typically focused on forensic examination of the bodies themselves but, despite much revolutionary scientific research, debate surrounding why individuals were killed and deposited in bogs has stagnated. Consensus generally remains divided between two key themes originally suggested in the early 19th and 20th centuries: capital punishment, and ritual sacrifice.
Few studies have considered the landscape and environmental context of bog bodies – a striking oversight given the insights this could provide into motivations for killing and deposition. For example, addressing questions relating to accessibility and visibility of sites allows for insights regarding the potential for audiences to view events; reconstructing contemporaneous vegetation can indicate presence of trees to act as possible gibbets for individuals who were hanged. Additionally, episodes of environmental change, such as climatic deterioration and its impacts on agriculture, may provide motivation for ritual sacrifice.
Our interdisciplinary approach will advance interpretation of Iron Age bog bodies by combining cutting-edge ecological and chronological modelling with cultural archaeology and archival research. Analyses of plant and insect remains preserved in the peat will be used to reconstruct the contemporaneous environment before, during and after deposition of bodies in four different bogs. These reconstructions will be at human generational timescales and the spatial scale of single trees, reflecting the lived experience of the individuals represented by bog bodies and enabling as yet unanswered questions about their deaths to be resolved.
Project objectives
We will focus on four case study bogs: Bjældskovdal and Borremose in Denmark, and Lindow Moss in the UK have been chosen due to discoveries of multiple bodies at each site enabling comparison both within and between bogs. Our fourth site, Nebelgårds Mose in Denmark, is a small, isolated bog from which a single body has been recovered, to provide comparisons with the larger bogs with multiple bodies. Our specific objectives are to:
· Generate a complete understanding of archive data relating to the discoveries of bog bodies, and of all published and unpublished palaeoenvironmental and stratigraphic data, from each bog.
· Develop stratigraphic deposit models for all four case study sites.
· Produce new, securely dated palynological and palaeoentomological data for Bjældskovdal and Borremose.
· Create mapped and quantified reconstructions of land-cover at 20-30 year intervals across the period 600-0 BCE at all sites.
· Develop new, environmentally contextualised and rigorous interpretations of the cultural archaeology of bog bodies.
Impact statement
Through our partnerships with Danish museums, we are ensuring that the data generated is appropriate to the needs of local stakeholders, including the nature conservation agencies who currently manage the peatlands. The peat stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental data generated will be at appropriate resolution for integration into present-day site management strategies.
To date, there has been relatively limited connection between environmental studies and archaeological research on peatlands, which naturally results in low public awareness of the relationships between the two, despite the importance of protecting both the environmental and cultural heritage of peatlands. To address, we are working with Natural England at Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve to engage local communities and equip them to advocate for and protect their local environments and heritage. To achieve this we are holding a series of participatory fieldwork sessions and environmental science workshops, through which we aim to build capacity for communities to conduct their own research into the evolution of Whixall Moss. These events are coordinated as a ‘citizen science’ project whereby participants will have opportunities to contribute to all areas of the work, generating their own new knowledge and understanding to reconstruct the past environments of their local area.
