PAST CRIMESof his ribs was cracked, and a sinew cord was wrapped tightly round his neck.
Clearly, his killers had wanted to do a thorough job.
A slightly later death occurred aroundAD100. The head of a bog body from
near Salford known as‘Worsley Man’has been put through a CT scanner.
Found in 1958, the body was of a similar age to the man from the Lindow
Moss, and like him had received a number of blows. The scan revealed the
marks of a ligature round his neck that had strangled him. Finally, the Worsley
Man was beheaded. This death occurred 150 years later, however, at a time
when the Romans had invaded Britain and were rapidly bringing the country
under their control.^11
Why were these people killed and buried in the bogs? A favourite
explanation is that they were ritual sacrifices. Some, though not all, seem to
have been fairly carefully laid to rest. But there are exceptions. The body
known as Huldremose woman, which was found in 1879, has been re
examined more recently. There was evidence of deep cuts to her legs and arms,
and it seems her right arm had been chopped off before she died, although this
is disputed. The damage may have been done by the peat cutters who found
her. It can be very difficult to establish at what point such cuts were made
because of the condition of the bodies when they finally reach the laboratory
for study. In 1897 the body of a girl was found near Yde in the Netherlands.
Just sixteen years old, she seems to have been strangled, and there was a knife
wound near her left collarbone. Two bodies found in 1904 at Bourtanger
Moor, also in the Netherlands, were of men who had been buried together. One
man had sustained a stab wound from which his intestines were protruding.
Strangulation is indicated in a number of bog body cases, as well as blows
to the head and cuts to the body. Was this a widespread ritual practice,
possibly as an offering to the gods in times of trouble? One explanation that
has been given is that it was the advance of the Romans into Northern Europe
that sparked a panic that demanded such sacrifices, but we now know that the
practice of bog burials went on both before and after the coming of the
Romans, as the dates of the Lindow and Worsley bodies clearly demonstrate.
Another possible explanation is that these were judicial executions of
criminals. In hisGermania,the Roman writer Tacitus recounts the legal
practices of the Germanic tribes. He tells us that criminals were brought
before a tribal assembly to answer for their misdeeds. If it was a small
transgression such as theft, the penalty was usually the payment of some
form of damages to the victim or his family, and to the tribal‘king’. For
more severe crimes, however, the death penalty was demanded. Traitors
and deserters were hanged. Cowards and those guilty of sexual crimes