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Last Meal and Testament
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17677 |
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BOOK WORLD
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6 / 1990 |
3,424 Words |
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John Sharkey
John Sharkey is a writer and consultant on Celtic history and
culture. He is the author of Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient
Religion. |
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A DRUID PRINCE
The Story of Lindow Man, an Archaeological Sensation
Anne Ross and Don Robins
New York: Summit Books, 1990
176 pp., $19.95
It is rare in Britain for major discoveries, outside of "stone and bone," to be found intact. The Sutton Hoo Saxon longboat was imprinted on the surrounding sand and was thus re-created from its mold. The Tudor man-of-war Mary Rose had to be dredged from its waterlogged silt and raised to the surface of the sea, prior to excavation. Whether artifact, site, or in this case, the preserved body of an ancient man, such finds move beyond their restricted field of archaeology for a brief airing in the public eye. The authors, Ann Ross and Don Robins, state that one of the reasons for developing the "druid hypothesis" was that after the first flurry of media excitement there "was sheer lack of curiosity about the antecedents of Lindow Man's life and death."
The place chosen was once an extensive bog of over six hundred hectares, although today it has shrunk to about a tenth of its original size. The name Lindow may be derived from Welsh, Llyn, or lake, and ddu, or black. The authors' reconstruction of his grim fate presents him as a sacrificial victim who picked his own death warrant, a price of burnt bannock, in order to suffer a ritual triple death at the hands of the druids. A noble, willing sacrifice was necessary to placate their gods for the desecration of the sacred isle of Mona by Suetonius Paulinus. This was the final scene of the dark year of A.D. 60 that had begun with Boadicca's revolt against the Romans.
Workmen extracting part of Lindow Moss, on the outskirts of Greater Manchester, found a soft and pliable lump they joking called a dinosaur's egg. When hosed down it turned out to a human skull. Six months later, in June 1984, the same workmen found a severed leg on the conveyer of a peat extractor. The leg was dried and leathery, but still unmistakably human. By this time such finds were news, and local journalist tipped off the county archaeologist. Soon after arriving the following morning, he noticed what looked like a flap of leather protuding from a long-worked peat level nearby. The coffee-colored skin, with its pores still visible, was repacked with wet turf to prevent further hardening.
Cutting around what the archaeologists ascertained to be the complete body,
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