Recovery, Dating and Conservation

 Out of the hundreds of bog bodies that have been found throughout history, few remain to be studied today; either no legitimate record was made at the time of their discovery or there is a scientific account of the find but the body itself has long been lost or destroyed. One way to ensure that future scientists won't run into these same problems is to follow a strict scientific procedure for excavating, dating and conducting preliminary examinations, and then to conserve the body the most effective way possible.

 M. Delaney and R. O Floinn, in their article A Bog Body from Meenybraddan Bog, County Donegal, Ireland, lay out a suggested routine to guide future excavations of bog bodies. In abbreviated form, this consists of seven straightforward steps:

 
1. Coordinate investigations.
2. Handle/disturb body as little as possible.
3. The archaeologist and appropriate medical authorities should be the first to handle the body after discovery.
4. Excavation should be supervised by a human remains specialist or else the body should be removed from the bog intact in a block of peat.
5. Samples of nails, hair, teeth, tissue, etc. should be taken during the first exposure of the body.
6. X-rays, CT scan, autopsy and the taking of further samples should ideally all take place on the same day, in the same institution, in the above order.
7. After the above is completed, conservation should proceed as rapidly as possible.

 It is from these preliminary samples and environmental evidence, that scientists attempt to date bog finds. Unfortunately, radiocarbon dating is not always a very straight-forward process when it comes to bog material; the tanning process can result in carbon which photosynthesized at a later date transferring into the body. Sometimes, chemicals used in conservation can also cause problems. This is not to say that no bog bodies can be accurately dated-only that scientists must be careful to take factors such as these into account. T. J. Painter, in his article The Chemical and Microbiological Aspects of the Preservation Process in Sphagnum Peat, suggests that scientists use cholesterol found in a body to date radioactivity since it is highly insoluble in water and therefore able to produce accurate results.

 The last thing mentioned by Delaney and O Floinn is the obvious step of conserving the body. In the past, this process has been carried out a number of different ways. Grauballe Man, was actually "re-tanned" in oak bark and then oiled with glycerine, lanolin and cod liver oil to prevent him from drying out. Lindow Man, on the other hand, was soaked in a 15% solution of polyethylene glycol in distilled water for ten weeks before he was freeze-dried. T. J. Painter, in the same article mentioned earlier, says that the most important aspect of conservation involves preventing the tissues from shrinking or drying. This can be accomplished by uniformly impregnating tissues with a hydrophilic lubricant (like the polyethylene glycol used on Lindow Man) in the form of a "jelly" applied directly to the body.

 This kind of careful record and conservation of bog finds gains importance when we face the possibility that we've exhausted our source environment of any new discoveries. It has been estimated that 96% of the raised bog existing in Britain in 1850 has been lost (Turner, 1995), and we have already recovered quite a huge number of bog artifacts. If future scientists are to reap more information out of these bodies than researchers today are capable of, today's efforts at conservation must withstand the effects of time.