(no subject)
Sep. 15th, 2009 07:34 am'2,000-year-old feet found in Dublin attic 'closely resemble a bog body in appearance,' states reporter with a knack for ferreting out the blindingly obvious.
The feet are 2,000 years old. They're not a matched pair (one clearly came from an adult, one equally clearly from a child), and they're stained brown and, hey, really well-preserved for soft-tissue remains that are 2,000 years old. Just like a bog body. Funny that - do you suppose they might be - *gasp* - from bog bodies?
While this is an interesting story, there's no great mystery here, apart from whether these feet are from bodies we already know about, or whether there are two more bodies out there somewhere that we can find... if we can just track down whoever found them in the first place and make them lead us back to the place they were found. That's the problem with lack of provenance - we're not going to learn a hell of a lot from a pair of disembodied feet.
As to how they ended up in the attic, I should think that was fairly clear - personally, if I didn't know what bog bodies were and I was digging up peat somewhere for construction or whatever, and a pair of feet fell out, I can easily see how there might be a temptation to hide them to avoid potentially awkward questions. Not to mention the halting of whatever construction project brought them to light. So, that's my bet. And, sadly, I'm betting that'll mean we won't be seeing the full bodies that go with these feet anytime soon, either. Just my two cents of guessing.
The feet are 2,000 years old. They're not a matched pair (one clearly came from an adult, one equally clearly from a child), and they're stained brown and, hey, really well-preserved for soft-tissue remains that are 2,000 years old. Just like a bog body. Funny that - do you suppose they might be - *gasp* - from bog bodies?
While this is an interesting story, there's no great mystery here, apart from whether these feet are from bodies we already know about, or whether there are two more bodies out there somewhere that we can find... if we can just track down whoever found them in the first place and make them lead us back to the place they were found. That's the problem with lack of provenance - we're not going to learn a hell of a lot from a pair of disembodied feet.
As to how they ended up in the attic, I should think that was fairly clear - personally, if I didn't know what bog bodies were and I was digging up peat somewhere for construction or whatever, and a pair of feet fell out, I can easily see how there might be a temptation to hide them to avoid potentially awkward questions. Not to mention the halting of whatever construction project brought them to light. So, that's my bet. And, sadly, I'm betting that'll mean we won't be seeing the full bodies that go with these feet anytime soon, either. Just my two cents of guessing.