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 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 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 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 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 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 and . Apart from the hairband, no other jewellery was observed in the coffin.
Boots The Woman of Peiting was buried wearing knee-high leather boots, which remained remarkably well preserved when her coffin was discovered in the bog in 1957.
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 , 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 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 long and high. It was about wide at the foot and wide at the head, and its boards were thick.
Holes about 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.