The Bog People - (New York Review Books Classics) by P V Glob (Paperback)

About the Book

Conceived as a detective story of sorts, "The Bog People" is a fascinating account of the religion, culture, and daily life of Iron Age Europe as revealed when a well-preserved body is found in a Danish bog.

Book Synopsis

One spring morning two men cutting peat in a Danish bog uncovered a well-preserved body of a man with a noose around his neck. Thinking they had stumbled upon a murder victim, they reported their discovery to the police, who were baffled until they consulted the famous archaeologist P.V. Glob. Glob identified the body as that of a two-thousand-year-old man, ritually murdered and thrown in the bog as a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility.

Written in the guise of a scientific detective story, this classic of archaeological history--a best-seller when it was published in England but out of print for many years--is a thoroughly engrossing and still reliable account of the religion, culture, and daily life of the European Iron Age.

Includes 76 black-and-white photographs.

Review Quotes

A fascinating account of the discoveries and of what they tell us about the life and death of the Iron Age people.
-- Times Literary Supplement

Glob deserves gratitude not only for preserving these astonishing underground survivors physically, but for a fascinating exposition of their way of life.
-- Daily Telegraph

A splendid book, full of detail and fascination not only for the specialist, who would indeed benefit from reading it, but for anyone interested in the techniques and results of first-rate archaeological research.
-- Nature

About the Author

P.V. Glob (1911-1985) was the Director General of Museums and Antiquities for the State of Denmark and Director of the National Museum in Copenhagen. Although his professional interest took him from Greenland to the Arabian Gulf, his most sustained study was of his native country. In addition to The Bog People, Glob published numerous anthropological works including Denmark: An Archaeological History from the Stone Age to the Vikings and Mound People: Danish Bronze-Age Man Preserved.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. Her research and publications focus on various aspects of anthropology and language. She teaches archaeology and linguistics at Occidental College.

Paul T. Barber received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. He is a research associate at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History at the University of California, Los Angeles.