Bog Bodies: face to face with the past

Presenting key ideas from her new book, archaeologist Dr Melanie Giles (University of Manchester) will discuss the human remains from bogs across north-western Europe, putting them back into their wider social and cultural context by discussing what prehistoric people were doing on bogs, what else they deposited within their depths and how we might understand these often violent practices. She will propose that we need to resituate bog bodies within evidence for violence in other Iron Age and early Roman contexts, discussing contrastive interpretations. She will also debate how this might influence the role they play in museum exhibitions, and as points of creative inspiration in the current challenge of climate change, suggesting this archaeology has the power to re-enchant us with these places and see them anew.