Mossberga Mosse: Excavating the Archives and Tracing Museum Ecologies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bog bodies are rare finds occasionally revealed in connection with peat-cutting or excavation of drains. However, the record might be richer than formerly acknowledged, as earlier finds may survive as non-identified parts of museum collections, and have, therefore, been missed by researchers. This paper presents osteological finds from Mossberga bog on the island of Öland which were rediscovered in museum storage recently. It provides a case study that traces how the archaeological and antiquarian processes ‘tie together’ and ‘cut apart’ materials in what could be called museum ecologies. The assemblage includes human and non-human remains from a bog site and investigates how wetland archaeology is taken from excavation into the public domain. The relationships around this find are folded out, using radiocarbon dating, osteological analysis, archival materials and landscape descriptions to tie together and problematize stories of how the practice of depositing bodies in wetlands stretched across centuries.