Anthropology The skull had been broken into several pieces. The acids in the bog have decalcified the bone, which has shrunk somewhat and is dark brown. The hair and small sections of scalp are well preserved, but the skin and other soft tissues of the face have disappeared. There is a large wound on the left side of the head, which may have been fatal: the skull had been depressed by a blow with a blunt object over an area approximately in diameter, and the bone of the left temple was shattered with splinters penetrating the brain area. The skull had also been deformed by the weight of the peat above it, but the facial area was generally well preserved. Skeletal evidence suggests a man 50 to 60 years of age. Hack marks on the second
cervical vertebra show that the head was cut off. In a re-examination in 2005,
isotopic analysis showed that at least during his last year of life, the man ate meat remarkably rarely, and did not eat seafood.
Parasitological analysis of the hair showed no
head lice, unusual for the time.
Hairstyle The hair is unusually well preserved and is tied above the right temple in a
Suebian knot.
Tacitus describes this in Chapter 38 of his
Germania as a characteristic of free men among the Germanic tribe of
Suebi. The knot appears in several Roman depictions and on at least one other bog body,
Dätgen Man (who wore his on the back of his head). Osterby has featured the Suebian knot on its coat of arms since 1998.
Skin cape The skull was wrapped in fragments of a garment, measuring approximately , consisting of
tanned pieces of leather sewn together. Microscopic analysis suggested, based on the hairs, that they were from
roe deer. The neck opening was lined with a strip of leather about wide. All seams had been sewn with small stitches in
catgut. Some appeared to be repairs. Textile archaeologists identified the garment as a skin cape; similar cloaks or capes have been found with other archaeological finds, including
Elling Woman,
Haraldskær Woman,
Dröbnitz Girl,
Kayhausen Boy and
Jührdenerfeld Man.
Treatment Peter Löhr performed the anthropological analysis, which determined that the skull had shrunk while immersed in the bog. For his doctoral dissertation, he performed experiments on it involving repeated soaking and drying and detailed measurements; in his view, soaking caused it to swell to almost its original dimensions. Löhr's data included markedly shrunk teeth and the complete lower jaw associated with the skull, which has a protruding chin. However, more recent analysis has shown that in his original preparation of the skull for exhibition,
Karl Schlabow added an unrelated lower jaw.
Dating The Suebian knot indicates the man died in the Late
Iron Age or the Roman period, and
radiocarbon dating likewise indicates a date between 75 and 130
CE; however, the hair sample used was taken from
Alfred Dieck's private collection and may thus be unreliable. ==Analysis==