Journal of Wetland Archaeology Bog Bodies Special Edition: Foreword

ABSTRACT

An introduction outlining the background to this special edition of the Journal of Wetland Archaeology, co-edited by Julia Farley and Benjamin Gearey, and the aims of the papers. This volume is the result of an international workshop on bog bodies held at the British Museum in March 2019, the most recent meeting of the Bog Bodies Network that formed following a workshop at Stockholm University in 2009. The volume is divided into three parts. The first addresses the nature and landscape of the bog itself, and its representation in both poetry and archaeological writing. The second looks at the excavation and conservation of bog bodies, while the third considers their interpretation and display.

KEYWORDS:

• Bog bodies
• peat bogs
• landscape archaeology
• conservation
• museums
• interpretation
• ‌human remains
• display

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Julia Farley is Curator of European Iron Age and Roman conquest period collections at the British Museum. Her research interests include craft and production, especially metalwork and metal working technologies, Iron Age ritual and depositional practices, and the colonial encounter between communities in Iron Age Britain and the Roman world. She was lead curator on the major British Museum exhibition, Celts: Art and Identity (September 2015–January 2016), organised in partnership with National Museums Scotland, and contributed to and co-edited the associated exhibition catalogue. Prior to joining the British Museum, she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Leicester, researching the circulation of gold and silver in Iron Age and Roman Britain. She is currently working towards publication of the Iron Age site at Snettisham in Norfolk, with Jody Joy from the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Dr Melanie Giles is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, who specialises in Iron Age archaeology, particularly studies of funerary rites and grave goods. She is the lead researcher on the ‘Worsley Man’ research project, working collaboratively with the Manchester Museum. She has authored various articles on displaying the dead, the archaeology of well-preserved human remains and studies of violence and performance in the past. Her forthcoming book, Bog Bodies: face to face with the past, will be published in late 2020 by Manchester University Press.

Christina Fredengren is an Associate Professor, has a long term research interest in wetland archaeology and is currently working on the project Water of the Times at the Department of Archaeology at Stockholm University. That project that deals with human- and animal sacrifice and depositions of bodies in Swedish lakes, rivers and wetlands.