The bog is where forensics and archaeology meet to solve ‘cold cases’

We need to think in terms of developing 'best practice' for excavating future bog bodies, drawing on contemporary approaches to investigating homicides, writes Rosie Everett, Benjamin Gearey, and Karl Harrison

The bones found last October at the site in Bellaghy, Co Derry, that are potentially 2,000 years old. The skeletal remains are believed to be from a male aged between 13 to 17 years of age at the time of death. 

Occasionally, police investigators find themselves announcing archaeological discoveries, rather than criminal findings. 

In 1984, for example, police in England oversaw the recovery of the Iron Age bog body (a naturally mummified corpse found in a peat bog) later called “Lindow Man” in Cheshire.