A Special SciBar at The Manchester Museum

The SciBar included a private visit to the Museum to view the “Lindow Man” exhibit, the naturally preserved body of an Iron Age man which will be in Manchester from April 2008 until March 2009.

Thanks to the preservative powers of the bog waters many details can be obtained about the health, lives and deaths of these Iron Age bodies. We know that Lindow Man was well built, in his twenties, 1.68m tall, and weighed about 60 kg. Before this death he was generally in good health, except from suffering from worms and a touch of rheumatism.

It will be the third time the freeze-dried bog man – discovered in Wilmslow (or is it really Mobberley?), Cheshire, in 1984 – will have been on display in the city. But this time Manchester Museum is developing proposals that will reflect a wide range of different perspectives on the display of the human remains. Through a series of public consultations the views of archaeologists, curators and Pagan groups are being sought; all of whom have very different views on Lindow Man.

Whether or not the remains, carbon dated to between 2 BC and 119 AD, cease to be a person on death, as archaeology assumes, or continue to retain personhood, as the Pagans believe, is central to the debate about the nature of the forthcoming exhibition.