The high moor as a final resting place, or as a setting for murder, manslaughter and violence? Van Beek: “In total, we have found more than a thousand individuals, over time. The cause of death of some of them is known. Where we were able to determine the cause of death, violence is remarkably often involved. That could be anything. “People can be hit on the head. You can see that on the skull. It could be that someone was hanged, or strangled. In the past, all kinds of explanations have been linked to this and one of them points to ritual sacrifices, a very popular theory in archaeology. What we’re trying to explain in the article is that there could have been other causes as well. Someone being robbed on a path in the moors. Or maybe by simply getting lost and drowning in the moors. We try to paint a slightly more nuanced picture in this story than just saying: all those bog bodies are all ritual sacrifices to higher powers.”
Murder, violence and faith. The high moor as an archive of our history
