Sanders, Karin. 2009. Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. ISBN 13:978-0-226-73404-0 (cloth). 233 pages, plus 82 pages of notes, bibliography and index; 63 black and white photographs.
Bog Bodies and Peat Bogs
Bog bodies are the human remains of men, women and children, pushed into marshes in northern Europe primarily during the Iron Age of about 2,000 years ago; and pulled out of peat bogs in startlingly life-like preservation beginning in the 17th century AD. They, says Karin Sanders in her book Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination, are travelers across time.
- Read more about Bog Bodies
- Guide to the European Iron Age
As archaeologists and fans of archaeology, we know that feeling of awe and amazement at seeing unmistakable reflections of past humanity, whether that feeling comes from seeing bog bodies, the Laetoli footprints, the plaster casts from Pompeii or even from a stone tool picked up from a farm field. But in our busy lives, we don't often get an intimate glimpse into the poetic, artistic, political and sexual creations that result from the contact between these travelers and the non-archaeological community. That is what Bodies in the Bog offers.
The artists, writers, poets, psychologists and politicians that Sanders introduces us to are drawn to the complexities of the bodies, their otherness as sacrifices or criminals, and their location and resurrection from the quintessential liminal place: the peat bog. Neither land nor sea, a marsh is dark, mysterious and sexy. The marsh's conversion into peat; and the conversion of the bodies in it, is a source of both wonderment and horror.
Chapter Summary
Chapter 1 of Bodies in the Bog introduces us to the history and latest (general) archaeological findings about bog bodies, and provides a context for the following chapters. Chapter 2, called "The Archaeological Canny" describes the effect of the discoveries on pioneer psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. Fainting is involved.
Chapter 3 is called "Uses and Abuses: Bog Body Politics", and in it, Sanders reflects on the Nazi obsession with bog bodies, in particular Hitler's conviction (I wish) that they were examples of justifiable homicide because... well, you can guess. At the same time, Sanders introduces us to Holocaust survivor literature, some of which uses the bog as a metaphor for the concentration camps, and the survivors themselves as analogous to resurrected bodies, irremediably changed by the time spent underground. This chapter concludes with poet Seamus Heaney's use of the violence of bog bodies as a metaphor for the political unrest in northern Ireland.
Sanders uses Chapter 4, "Erotic Digging", to describe the way poets, writers and artists have expressed the erotic nature of bogs and the almost-perfect bodies in them. The sheer physicality of the bodies coupled with the mysterious nature of bogs has led to imagined experiences expressed in poetry, novels and films.
In Chapter 5, "Bog Body Art", Sanders describes how painters and sculptors of the 20th century explored images of sexuality and violence arising from the bog. Chapter 6 is "Museum Thresholds and the Ethics of Display"; and Chapter 8, "Making Faces", describes the creation of identity and personhood by reconstructing faces from pieces of the past.
Bottom Line
Bodies in the Bog is a richly detailed exploration of the ideas, commentary and fantasies engendered in the people who investigate bog bodies beyond scientific archaeological methodology. As such, the artistic, erotic and political aspects of these time travelers are an object lesson about how people perceive the past. The book is an adept companion piece to Peter Vilhelm Glob's The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved, first published in 1965 and responsible for introducing many many people to Bog People.
Bog bodies, mummies, plaster casts of the victims of Mt. Vesuvius, Laetoli footprints. All of these are inescapable evidence that the past is not (wholly) imagined in the brains of historians and archaeologists.
