Woman of Peiting

Woman of Peiting
Preserved remains of the Woman of Peiting
Born	Unknown
Died	1290–1370 or 1380–1440 CE
Body discovered	23 July 1957 Weiter Filz, Hohenpeißenberg, Bavaria, West Germany
Known for	Bog body found in a wooden coffin
Height	152 cm (5 ft 0 in) (estimated)

The Woman of Peiting is a late-medieval bog body discovered in 1957 in the Weiter Filz, a raised bog near Peiting in Upper Bavaria, Germany. Direct radiocarbon dating of her remains places her death in either 1290–1370 or 1380–1440 CE. She was approximately 20–30 years old and was estimated to have been about 152 cm (5 ft 0 in) tall.

Unusually for a bog body, the Woman of Peiting was buried in a substantial wooden coffin, which protected her remains from much of the compression caused by the surrounding peat. Her skeleton survived nearly complete, together with substantial soft tissue, a woollen dress, a tablet-woven hairband and unusually well-preserved knee-high leather boots. The position of her body, with her arms crossed over her chest, has been interpreted as consistent with Christian burial practice, although why she was buried alone in the bog rather than in a cemetery remains unknown.

Early investigations produced conflicting interpretations of her date and health. Renewed scientific study beginning in 2007 directly dated her remains to the Late Middle Ages and reassessed many of the earlier findings, but her geographical origin and cause of death remain uncertain. The original remains are now held and displayed by the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich.

Discovery

The individual who became known as the Woman of Peiting was discovered on 23 July 1957 during peat extraction in the Weiter Filz, a raised bog in Upper Bavaria, southern Germany. Peat was extracted commercially from the bog from 1923 to 1990.

Peat worker Samuel Gunsch was operating an excavator against a vertical face of peat when its bucket struck a wooden box embedded in the bog. Thinking that he might have found a treasure chest, Gunsch stopped work. The excavator had broken through one corner of the lid, allowing him to look inside and see human remains. He reported the discovery to the manager of the peat works, operated by Momm & Co. KG of Kaufbeuren. The coffin was covered again with peat to prevent it from drying while the discovery was reported to the authorities.

The following day, 24 July, police notified the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection in Munich. Excavation technician Wilfried Titze arrived that day and began an excavation that continued for several days. He also made exploratory borings within 4 m (13 ft) of the coffin, but found no additional archaeological remains.

On 25 July, two days after the discovery, the State Office asked Karl Schlabow of the Textile Museum in Neumünster to oversee the recovery and conservation of the remains. Schlabow and his assistant Willi Schramm arrived on 29 July. The woman's body and coffin were enclosed in a protective wooden casing, packed with soft peat to prevent them from drying, and transported by truck to Neumünster in northern Germany.

Titze returned to the findspot in the autumn of 1962, five years after the discovery. Exploratory investigations and a large trench reached the underlying clay, establishing that the peat at the site was about 1.2 m (3.9 ft) deep. The renewed investigation produced no additional archaeological finds.

Published accounts later frequently placed the discovery in the nearby Schwarzlaichmoor. In 2007, the original excavation records were re-examined and the findspot was surveyed. The work established that the coffin had instead been found in the Weiter Filz, within Hohenpeißenberg and close to its boundary with Peiting. The Schwarzlaichmoor lies about 1 km (0.62 mi) to the southeast.

Condition

At the time of her discovery in 1957, the Woman of Peiting was unusually well preserved. Her skeleton survived almost completely, and substantial areas of the torso and upper legs retained soft tissue and adipose tissue. The face, hands beneath the chin and parts of the breasts were more extensively skeletonised.

Unlike many bodies deposited directly in peat, her remains had not been severely compressed. The wooden coffin protected the body from much of the pressure of the overlying bog, allowing the skeleton to retain its general form.

The bones were strongly demineralised by the bog environment and were soft and flexible when the body was recovered. After conservation and drying, they became considerably lighter. Fat beneath the skin had been converted into adipocere, a wax-like substance that can form during decomposition.

The preserved skin had been tanned by the acidic bog environment. Numerous cuts visible on the body resulted from the 1957 autopsy and subsequent sampling rather than injuries sustained during the woman's lifetime.

Clothing and associated items

Clothing

The Woman of Peiting was buried wearing a dress of fine wool. In the late 1950s, German textile archaeologist Karl Schlabow examined the surviving clothing and reconstructed the outer garment as an approximately knee-length dress made from light-coloured, fine sheep's wool. The fabric was folded at the front and back, with the folds sewn below the shoulders and widening towards the hem. The surviving wool was subsequently stained brown by the acidic conditions in the bog.

Schlabow also found traces of fabric on the floor of the coffin and on the woman's body. He believed that the fabric was linen, possibly from an undergarment, but this was never confirmed by examining the fibres to determine whether they came from flax, the plant from which linen is made. The material therefore cannot be identified with certainty as linen.

Fragments of a second, lightweight woollen fabric survived around the lower body, crotch and thighs. Schlabow interpreted these as the possible remains of another undergarment, perhaps resembling trousers.

Hairband

Her hair was held by a two-coloured tablet-woven band about 18 mm (0.71 in) wide. Tablet weaving is a technique in which threads are passed through small cards or tablets that are turned to produce a narrow patterned band. Two sections of the hairband survive, measuring 37 cm (15 in) and 23 cm (9.1 in). Apart from the hairband, no other jewellery was observed in the coffin.

The Woman of Peiting's knee-high leather boots. Wear and a patch on the right boot show that they had been used during her lifetime.

Boots

The Woman of Peiting wore knee-high leather boots. The shafts were made from soft, flexible goatskin, while the soles, vamps, which covered the upper part of the foot, and heel reinforcements were made from more durable cattle leather. Each sole measures about 23 cm (9.1 in), corresponding to approximately a modern European size 36.

The boots show clear signs of prolonged use. The right boot had also been repaired with a patch during the woman's lifetime. The Archäologische Staatssammlung identifies the wear and repair as evidence that she had worn the boots while she was alive, rather than the footwear having been made specifically for her burial.

Knee-high boots worn by women are rarely represented in surviving medieval images. The Archäologische Staatssammlung notes that the Peiting boots therefore provide archaeological evidence that women wore this type of footwear during the period. The museum suggests that high boots would have provided practical protection while riding and spending time outdoors.

Burial and deposition

Deposition

The coffin was found approximately 50 cm (20 in) below the surface of the bog and was aligned approximately east to west. The woman's head lay at the eastern end, facing west. She had been placed on her back with her arms crossed over her chest, her left hand resting over her right.

Coffin

The Woman of Peiting was buried in a wooden coffin measuring 183 cm (6 ft 0 in) long and 37 cm (15 in) high. It was about 34–36 cm (13–14 in) wide at the foot and 35–39 cm (14–15 in) wide at the head, and its boards were 4–4.5 cm (1.6–1.8 in) thick.

Holes about 3 cm (1.2 in) across had been made near all four corners of the coffin. Remains of willow or bast fibres were recovered from the holes during the original investigation. Bast is the flexible inner layer of bark from certain trees and can be used to make cordage. Wood shavings were also found inside the coffin.

When the coffin was examined after its discovery in 1957, its wood was identified as pine. During renewed scientific investigation in 2007, wood scientist Mathias Rehbein and wood biologists Gerald Koch and Peter Klein examined samples from a side board and one of the wooden dowels. Using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, they identified the coffin boards as Norway spruce (Picea abies) and the dowel as European ash (Fraxinus excelsior), correcting the earlier identification.

The researchers noted that ash is strong and well suited to structural joints and interpreted its use for the dowels as deliberate selection of different woods for different parts of the coffin.

Despite the relatively low natural resistance of spruce to decay, the coffin was exceptionally well preserved. Microscopic examination found slight bacterial deterioration of the spruce and more extensive deterioration of the ash dowel. Rehbein, Koch and Klein attributed the overall preservation of the coffin to the acidic, oxygen-poor conditions of the bog, which restricted the organisms that normally destroy wood.

The coffin may also have contributed to the unusual preservation of the woman's body by protecting it from the pressure of the overlying peat. Unlike many bog bodies, her remains had not been severely compressed, and substantial soft tissue survived on the torso and upper legs.

Interpretation

German archaeologist Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and forensic pathologist Klaus Püschel interpreted the crossed position of the woman's arms as consistent with Christian burial practice. Why she was buried alone in the bog rather than in a conventional cemetery remains unexplained.

German textile archaeologist Karl Schlabow, who investigated the remains after their discovery in 1957, proposed that the coffin had originally been deliberately sunk in open water. He interpreted the holes at its corners as attachment points for ropes weighted with stones. In his reconstruction, the ropes at the head end decayed first, causing that end of the coffin to rise, before the remaining ropes failed and the coffin rose completely. Schlabow used this sequence to explain why the woman's head and crossed forearms were less well preserved than other parts of her body.

Later investigators rejected Schlabow's reconstruction because no suitable weighting stones had been found during either the original excavation in 1957 or the re-excavation in 1962. They instead considered whether local differences in the chemical composition of the bog water could account for the uneven preservation of the body.

Conservation and preservation

1957 examination and reconstruction

After the Woman of Peiting arrived at the Textile Museum in Neumünster in late July 1957, she underwent a forensic examination before conservation began. During the examination, the torso was opened, the internal organs were removed and preserved separately, and samples were distributed to several scientific institutions for further study. Conservation began on 5 August 1957 under the direction of German textile archaeologist Karl Schlabow.

The body was immersed for approximately nine months in a bath containing oak tanning material (Eichenlohe). Parts of the body were also treated with oil. After conservation, the emptied torso was filled with material believed to have consisted of pieces of paper, the autopsy incision was sewn closed, and damaged areas of skin were filled and retouched for display.

The reconstruction was extensive. Metal supports and wooden replacements were inserted where skeletal elements had been removed or were missing, including parts of the cervical spine. Loose bones were wired together, several missing teeth were replaced with artificial ones, and some bones and teeth were not returned to their original anatomical positions. The skull, which had been sawn open during the autopsy, was reassembled with metal pins, glued together, and the joins were concealed with filler and paint.

The coffin was also treated during conservation. It was stabilised with methyl cellulose and repeatedly coated with diluted varnish, while velour fabric was glued to parts of the coffin floor as part of the museum display. The leather boots, which had been recovered in separate pieces, were treated with Dégras leather dressing and sewn back together.

2007 reassessment

In 2007, 50 years after the discovery, the Woman of Peiting was transferred to the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich for a comprehensive multidisciplinary re-examination. The investigation combined radiology, forensic pathology, radiocarbon dating, textile analysis and wood biology, and also reconstructed the history of the 1957 excavation and conservation treatments.

Researchers found that many samples taken during the original examination could no longer be located, limiting comparison with earlier studies. They also discovered a new infestation of mould on the preserved skin, which was mechanically removed before further examination.

The reassessment distinguished features that resulted from the medieval burial from those created during twentieth-century conservation, allowing researchers to reinterpret several earlier conclusions about the woman's body and burial.

Preservation of the coffin

The coffin underwent separate scientific examination during the 2007 research programme. Wood scientist Mathias Rehbein and wood biologists Gerald Koch and Peter Klein identified the coffin boards as Norway spruce (Picea abies) and the dowels joining them as European ash, correcting the earlier identification of the wood as pine.

Microscopic examination showed slight bacterial deterioration of the spruce boards and more extensive deterioration of the ash dowels. The researchers concluded that the coffin's exceptional survival was largely due to the acidic, oxygen-poor conditions of the bog, which inhibited the organisms that normally destroy wood.

Chemical analysis also revealed evidence of later conservation treatments. The velour fabric glued to the coffin floor during the 1957 reconstruction obscured parts of the original wooden joints, and researchers chose not to remove it because doing so risked damaging the coffin itself.

Later portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF) of the woman's skeleton also detected chemical traces of twentieth-century conservation. Anthropologist Guinevere Granite and archaeologist Andreas Bauerochse found unusually high concentrations of several elements in the hands, wrists and forearms, corresponding to the metal wires and supports inserted during the 1957 reconstruction. They concluded that the remains preserve measurable evidence of both centuries of burial in the bog and modern conservation treatments.

Scientific analysis

Date

The date of the Woman of Peiting was uncertain for decades after her discovery. In 1957, excavation technician Wilfried Titze and German textile archaeologist Karl Schlabow initially considered the burial medieval. Günter Gall of the German Leather Museum in Offenbach am Main, however, examined photographs and drawings of the woman's boots and dated them to the 8th or 9th century CE.

Upper body of the Woman of Peiting. Direct radiocarbon dating in 2007 placed her death in the late Middle Ages, substantially later than an earlier date based on her boots.

In 1965, a fragment of wood from the coffin lid was radiocarbon dated at the University of Cologne. The measurement produced an age of 1110 ± 80 radiocarbon years BP. When recalibrated during the modern reassessment, the result corresponded to a calendar range of 1087–1247 CE.

Researchers also attempted to date the coffin by dendrochronology, in which patterns of annual tree growth are compared with established regional chronologies. The spruce boards contained only about 30–35 annual growth rings, however, while a reliable comparison generally requires a continuous sequence of at least 50. The coffin therefore could not be dated dendrochronologically.

Because the earlier date obtained from the coffin wood remained uncertain, a sample of the woman's preserved tissue was directly dated in October 2007 at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The measurement produced a radiocarbon age of 552 ± 44 BP. Calibration placed her death, with 95.4 percent probability, in either 1290–1370 or 1380–1440 CE, dating her to the Late Middle Ages.

The direct dating of the woman's remains overturned the earlier 8th- or 9th-century date proposed based on the style of her boots. The discrepancy between the date of the body and the older radiocarbon result from the coffin remained unresolved. Rehbein reported in his 2011 dissertation that a new radiocarbon determination of the coffin was needed and that, to his knowledge, its result was still outstanding.

Body and health

The Woman of Peiting was probably between 20 and 30 years old when she died. Examination of the cranial sutures produced an age estimate of 15–25 years, while examination of her teeth indicated an age of no more than about 25. Other skeletal characteristics, including the closure of the growth plates in her bones, indicated an age of 20–30 years.

Her body measures 146 cm (4 ft 9 in) as preserved. Because the legs are bent and the skull is separated from the spine, this measurement does not represent her height in life. In 1957, her living stature was estimated at approximately 152 cm (5 ft 0 in). Her sex was identified as female from both characteristics of the skeleton and the preserved external genitalia.

Her skeleton was nearly complete and showed no evidence of fractures or other skeletal injuries sustained during life. Researchers found no degenerative changes and little wear on the joint surfaces, which they interpreted as indicating that she had not performed heavy physical labour. No Harris lines, lines in the long bones associated with interruptions in bone growth, were identified. The researchers interpreted their absence as evidence that she had not experienced severe illness or malnutrition while growing.

Substantial fatty tissue survived around the abdomen, hips and thighs. Together with expanded skin in these areas, this was interpreted by the researchers as indicating that she had been well nourished during life.

Records from the 1957 autopsy describe all of her internal organs as complete and well preserved and record no major pathological changes. The examination nevertheless recorded findings interpreted at the time as evidence of a healed inflammation of the large intestine, mild previous tuberculosis at the apex of a lung, and soot deposits in the alveoli of the lungs. These findings can no longer be verified because the organ specimens are lost.

Three teeth had been lost during her lifetime, and their empty tooth sockets had healed. Four other teeth were severely affected by dental caries. The preserved jaws show an overbite of approximately 2 to 3 cm (0.79 to 1.18 in). Researchers noted that the unusually broad appearance of the lower jaw may instead result from deformation of the bone while the body was in the bog. The acidic bog environment had destroyed much of the tooth enamel, limiting examination of dental wear; the surviving dentin showed no unusual wear.

Her surviving hair averaged approximately 15 cm (5.9 in) in length. It had been combed backwards and was held in place by the two-coloured tablet-woven band found with the body.

Pregnancy

Early examinations of the Woman of Peiting led researchers to believe that she had recently been pregnant. The interpretation was based on several anatomical observations, including unusually distended tissue around the abdomen, a protruding vulva, widening of the pelvic ring and the condition of the uterus. Her death was consequently sometimes associated with childbirth or the postpartum period.

When German archaeologist Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and forensic pathologist Klaus Püschel reassessed the remains in 2009, however, they concluded that the earlier observations did not establish that she had recently given birth. Changes caused by decomposition made some of the supposed signs of pregnancy difficult to interpret, and a recent pregnancy could therefore neither be confirmed nor excluded.

Later analysis of the woman's hair provided new but still tentative evidence. Researchers examined carbon and nitrogen isotope values in individual amino acids in the hair, which can reflect changes in metabolism as hair grows. They found a slight increase after what they regarded as a suspected conception, followed by a decline in amino-acid-specific nitrogen isotope values during the final months of her life. The researchers interpreted the pattern as potentially reflecting metabolic changes associated with pregnancy.

A regional summary of the research described the hair analysis as providing vague indications that she may have been pregnant twice. If that interpretation is correct, the later pregnancy had lasted only about six months by the time of her death. The summary emphasized that whether she was pregnant and whether she died as a consequence of a stillbirth remain speculative.

Last meal

Examination of the Woman of Peiting's digestive tract in the 1950s indicated that she had last eaten approximately six to eight hours before her death. Samples from her stomach and intestines, together with preserved faecal material, were examined in Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg. They contained mainly plant remains, including vegetables, salad plants and cereal husks, as well as a small number of fibres from animal food.

Investigators found no pollen that could be usefully analysed. Further study is unlikely to provide much more information: by 1960, three years after the Woman of Peiting was discovered, the original intestinal contents were already no longer available, and most of the samples taken from them are now considered lost.

Geographical origin

Researchers have investigated whether the Woman of Peiting grew up near the bog where she was buried, but chemical changes to her remains have made her geographical origin difficult to determine.

In 2010, 53 years after her discovery, anthropologist Guinevere Granite and archaeologist Andreas Bauerochse examined her bones and teeth using portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF), a non-destructive technique that measures the concentrations of chemical elements. Because they were unable to examine soil from the original findspot, they compared the remains with existing geochemical soil data from locations 5, 10 and 15 km (3.1, 6.2 and 9.3 mi) from the estimated discovery site.

The researchers compared concentrations of strontium in her bones and teeth with those in the regional soil data. Strontium concentrations in the bones and teeth were broadly similar to one another but lower than those recorded in the surrounding soils. Granite and Bauerochse considered the possibility that this difference indicated that the woman had grown up and perhaps died elsewhere before being buried at Peiting.

They cautioned, however, that the results could not reliably establish her geographical origin. During centuries in the acidic bog, strontium could have been both removed from and incorporated into the remains, altering the concentrations present during life. The wooden coffin may also have restricted the exchange of strontium between the body and the surrounding peat. Granite and Bauerochse therefore concluded that strontium concentrations measured by pXRF could not reliably be used to reconstruct the Woman of Peiting's geographical origin or migration history.

Later research also investigated her geographical origin using isotope analysis of her hair. A research team analysed hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and strontium isotopes in strands of hair in a study presented under the title Was Rosalinde a Pregnant Foreigner? Isotope Analysis of H, C, N, S and Sr in Hair Strands of a Late Medieval Bog Body from Upper Bavaria. The published project record does not report a firm conclusion about her geographical origin.

Cause of death

The cause of the Woman of Peiting's death is unknown. Forensic examinations found no evidence establishing how she died.

Haas-Gebhard and Püschel noted that poisoning or a rapidly progressing disease or infection could have caused her death without being identified during the earlier autopsy. Investigation of these possibilities is now limited because the organ samples taken after her discovery have been lost.

The loss of skin and muscle tissue from the neck also makes it difficult to determine whether she died by strangulation.

Exhibition and ownership

After the completion of the initial scientific investigations and conservation work, the Woman of Peiting remained at the Textile Museum in Neumünster, where she was kept and exhibited for several decades. Neither the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection nor the municipality of Peiting initially sought the return of the remains.

In 1987, Peiting requested the return of the remains for the municipality's 550th-anniversary celebrations the following year, with the intention of displaying them in the local history museum in nearby Schongau. A dispute over possession was resolved when the municipality and the Neumünster museum agreed that the remains would return to Bavaria on loan for the 1988 anniversary exhibition.

In early 2007, while still associated with the Neumünster museum, the Woman of Peiting was loaned to the LWL Museum of Archaeology in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia. The original remains went on display there on 23 February as part of the exhibition klima und mensch. leben in eXtremen and remained until the exhibition closed on 30 May. The museum announced at the time that the remains would subsequently travel to Bavaria for further scientific investigation.

Following restructuring of the former Textile Museum in Neumünster in 2007, the remains were transferred to the Free State of Bavaria, which assumed responsibility for their continued preservation and scientific investigation. They were subsequently transferred to the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection for the multidisciplinary reassessment that established much of the modern understanding of the find.

The original remains are now held by the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich. Following the museum's renovation and reopening in 2024, the Woman of Peiting was incorporated into its new permanent exhibition. She is displayed in the final room of the first-level exhibition route, which presents archaeology as a modern interdisciplinary science.

A replica of the Woman of Peiting and her coffin is exhibited at the Bavarian Moor and Peat Museum in Rottau, rather than the original remains.

See also

• List of bog bodies from Germany