Article P3QG Preservation society: how bronze age Britons mummified the dead

Preservation society: how bronze age Britons mummified the dead

by
Ian Sample Science editor
from on (#P3QG)

New study of ancient death rituals reveals evidence how bodies were smoked over fire, kept in peat bogs, brought out for special occasions, or even cobbled together in parts

Bronze age Britons may have mummified their dead by tossing them into peat bogs or smoking them over a fire, according to archaeologists who have studied the bones of hundreds of ancient locals.

The leathery corpses may have been kept in homes for decades and rolled out for special occasions, or used to assert families' legal rights to the land their deceased ancestors had worked in the distant past, they said.

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