Ancient human remains discovered in an Irish bog in October 2023 don't belong to a teenage boy as originally assumed but rather a young woman, making them an exceptionally rare find.
Over the past year, several museums and universities have collaborated to reveal new information about the individual, now known as the Ballymacombs More Woman, including her sex, age, height and manner of death.
"As is the case for so many Iron Age bog bodies, the young woman suffered a highly violent death which involved the flow of blood from her throat followed by decapitation," Eileen Murphy, an archaeologist at Queen's University Belfast who studied the body, said in a statement on Thursday (Feb. 20).
The body first came to light when police were alerted to human remains on the surface of a peat bog in the village of Bellaghy in Northern Ireland. Initial examination of the body showed that it was at least 2,000 years old, and a forensic anthropologist suggested the person was male and between 13 and 17 years old at the time of his death.
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"Ballymacombs More Woman is certainly one of the most important archaeological discoveries on the island of Ireland," Niamh Baker, curator of archaeology at National Museums Northern Ireland, said in the statement, particularly because the majority of bog bodies discovered in the British Isles from this time period are male.