Ancient Crimes and Sacrifice

It's difficult to say what offerings were given, if any (it was a bog... swamp) and it's entirely possible that organic material (flowers, food offerings, even woven straw or cloth) was rotted away or eaten away quickly. Swamps aren't tidy sites, and things wander through them, push materials down to other levels, etc.

My NEXT project for the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science involves working on dinosaur bones that were found in the equivalent of a swamp/marsh. It's a nightmare... everything smooshed and folded together and bodies in a real jumble (bones crushed almost beyond recognition.) Untidy burials are difficult to deal with.

This could have represented multiple practices and beliefs. One area might be sacrifices, another might be war captives, another might be criminals. At a guess there appears to be at least three distinct cultures involved.

reply to post by Byrd


I'm assuming animals haven't been found though? They would last at least as well as the human bog bodies wouldn't they? I haven't stumbled on any yet but as I've only been looking on and off since yesterday I might just be missing them. I'm thinking of domestic farm animals like horse and cattle that might also of been sacrificed if these are indeed sacrifices (which I'm not convinced about yet).

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by tom.farnhill

 

Bog bodies aren't confined to England or even particularly dated to Caesar's period in power. The quotation simply adds more context to the OP. I don't know how far he travelled into England and it's open to discussion how accurate the description is. There's also quite a lot of debate as to the accuracy of Tacitus and whether he portrayed the 'natives' as savages for political reasons.

I think that given the Romans practiced various forms of sacrificial, including human, divinations, not to mention what blood-letting passed for entertainment in those days, it is safe to assume that Tacitus was pushing an agenda, however often that can be as much about being ashamed of 'from whence you came', as it being for any other purpose. It is fairly common for civilisations to oppress the very practices that only a couple of generations before they engaged in quite happily. By the time of Augustus, the Roman Empire' s nobility was very much embracing it's own superiority, moral and otherwise, and the practice of divinations were restricted to only those sactioned by the state. Augustus chose the Augurs, and his adoption of 'August' as his official name allowed everyone to know as much. The Augurs, naturally, were able to achieve high status and took on many civil responsibilities for the state, gaining quite considerable power.

Nice thread.

Originally posted by Versa
reply to post by Byrd

 

I'm assuming animals haven't been found though?

A very good question!! I would like to know what animals,if any, have been found in the bogs as well. It would only seem to make sense that if these were ritual sacrifices being carried out that there would be more items (animals etc.) added to the 'burials'.

reply to post by jennybee35
I can usually find anything, but images and descriptions of animal bodies in these peat bogs are elusive. There are references to animals being preserved and yet no details and very little academic work to go from either. Our old friend the mammoth has been found in bogs, but I sometimes think I'd be more surprised if mammoths *weren't* found.

I'm guessing my search terms haven't been on target (preserved, preservation, bogs, mummies, peat, remains, animals, horse, cow, cattle etc) because it seems inevitable that at some point in time animals died and were preserved in peat bogs. If that bloody mammoth can find its way into one, why wouldn't other animals?

I'll keep looking.

In the meanwhile, you might enjoy some of the findings in the Le Brea Tar Pits or this article. It used to illustrated with cool pictures so it's lucky I posted them over here.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Thanks, Kandinsky! Gonna go check out linkies shortly!

I am sure your search terms were spot on. It is just odd that there is no real info on any of these animal mummy finds, if they were/are indeed being found in the bogs. Just weird?!

Seems like the appropriate place for this.
Irish Times

The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.
The 4,000-year-old remains, which predate the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun by nearly 700 years, are those of a young adult male.
He is believed to have met a violent death in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

This story reminds me of the old tales of Kings being sacrificed to make the grass grow.