2000-year-old man on display

Press, 21 April 1986, Page 32

2000-year-old man on display

By ROBIN CHARTERIS London The body of Iron Age Pete, an ancient Briton who was killed and dumped, naked, in a Cheshire peat bog 2500 years ago, will go on public show for the first time in July. He was the victim of a ritual killing. He had been garotted and then had his throat cut.

Since the discovery by a team of peat cutters, the corpse has been subjected to intense examination by scientists. The body was nicknamed Pete Marsh but is now more properly known as Lindow Man. It has been successfully freeze-dried and will be displayed in the

“Archaeology in Britain” exhibition to be opened by the Prince of Wales at the British Museum. A reconstruction of the man’s head is being prepared to give the public some idea of how he looked in life. The slx-month exhibition, costing almost $1 million, is the largest of Its kind mounted by the British Museum.

Spanning a period of some 10,000 years, from about 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1700 it will deal with such themes as the disposal of the prehistoric dead, the campaigns of the Roman army, medieval castles, monastic life, and the construction of great prehistoric monuments such as Stonehenge.