Dating bog bodies by means of 14C-AMS

We have made efforts to date a substantial number of bodies from northwest European peat bogs by means of 14C. In our research, we compared materials such as skin, hair, bone, textile, leather and wood where available. Most of the bodies we investigated were found to date from the Late Iron Age/Roman period (c. 2nd century BC–4th century AD). Our data set shows that bog bodies in general can indeed be successfully dated by means of 14C analysis. Our results contradict comments in the literature to the effect that ‘peat bogs can age corpses so as to distort completely the usefulness of Radiocarbon’.