Under the Skin: Norwegian Bog Skeletons and Perceptions of Personhood, Value, and Sacrifice

Marianne Moen,Matthew J Walsh

doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.65

Abstract

The authors set a relatively small and little-known corpus of human remains recovered from Iron Age wetland contexts in Norway in a wider theoretical framework of sacrifice and personhood. The material studied, fragmentary skeletal remains in wetland contexts, juxtaposed with the better-known bog body tradition of northern Europe, offers a base from which to query constructions and perceptions of personhood. Situating the discussion in a contextual framework and relational underpinnings of ways of being, the authors examine whether or not the assumption that personhood rests in a human body can be implicitly inferred when confronted with ancient human remains, and what this may imply for interpretations of human bodies in votive settings.

Highlights

References to human remains in wetlands often evoke images of the famous northern European bog bodies (Glob, 1971; van der Sanden, 1996)
While the Norwegian bog skeletons may not have the same instant pull as the better-preserved bog bodies, they raise just as many questions. As sacrificial offerings they reflect an entanglement of lives, values, personhood, relationships, and cultural contexts, which together create(d) their meaning
Their personhood and value may have been influenced by factors present both in life and death, generated and maintained by complex interactions and relations, perpetuating a web of meaning which cannot be reduced to, or contained in, human bodies

Summary

INTRODUCTION

References to human remains in wetlands often evoke images of the famous northern European bog bodies (Glob, 1971; van der Sanden, 1996). Our sample is quite different from the near-complete faces of the past that ‘proper’ bog bodies present We use this difference to examine the different responses such material tends to elicit, as a way of involving the skeletal remains in interpretations of how both collective and individual identity is configured, and to consider what human remains in sacrificial contexts reveal about underlying perceptions of value in relation to personhood. Social identity is not fixed, but an ongoing process of production in both the emic and etic senses (Brück, 2004: 311; Jones, 2005: 216) This becoming is dependent on the cultural framework and historical circumstance within which it takes place.

30–40 Female

20–30 Female 15–30 Female

BACKGROUND

SUMMARY OF THE DATA

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSIONS