Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. Welcome to this latest episode of the ancients and we are talking all the things bog bodies. These bodies preserved in wetlands for thousands of years, each with their own amazing, gruesome story to tell. And that's what I really loved about this topic. It's the fact that every bog body has a different

story to tell and it's the job of archaeologists to explore the evidence we have surviving

alongside the body, including the body itself, to try and figure out what happened to this

individual. It's a real great kind of mystery-solving topic of prehistory. I really do hope you enjoy it. Our guest is fantastic, the one and only professor Melanie Giles from the University of Manchester. Mel, I've had the pleasure of working with her on a documentary recently. She's a wonderful person and a brilliant storyteller. I really do hope you enjoy. Let's go.

There's some of the most striking human remains from history. Well-preserved bodies dug out of the great bogs that span northern Europe, many dating to ancient times.

Tollandman, Lindo man, old Crohn Man, just a few of the most famous examples.

Their stories give us a window into a prehistoric world of murder, sacrifice, crime and punishment, a world where death and the supernatural loomed large

over life. Frozen in time, these prehistoric cold cases have fascinated people for millennia.

From the Roman historian Tacitus to the famous Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote several poems about bog bodies.

With new discoveries continuing to be made and advances in science, now more than ever before,

archaeologists are able to piece together the stories of these ancient

individuals, how they lived and how they died. This is the story of bog bodies with our guest, Professor

Melanie Giles. Mel, it is great to see you again and it wonderful to have you on the podcast.

Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.

And to talk all things, bog bodies, now as it fair to say, there's nothing quite like

looking at a bog body, literally a face from the prehistoric past.

Yes, I think for me as an Iron Age archaeologist, it is that, that feeling that you are

literally looking into the face of somebody from 2000 to and a half thousand years ago,

which makes me feel that they have stories to tell that can't be told through other remains,

and I find them fascinating for many different reasons.

Now, to kick it all off, what exactly do we mean by a bog body?

So when a set of human remains enters an environment that is largely formed of peat,

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