A startling face stares from the front page of this newspaper today, one with a dramatic tale to tell. Although dead for 2,300 years the visage of this man speaks to us of Iron Age Ireland and has much to say about life in times long past. It tells a story of life and culture, but also of murder most foul, of a ritual killing that snuffed out the life of the person whom we now see as an archaeological artefact.
The face and torso belong to a man known only as Clonycavan Man. He was recovered as a bog body found in waste peat in Co Meath, an inauspicious return to a very changed Irish social milieu compared to the one that would have been familiar to him.
Bog bodies are rare and remarkable discoveries, but Clonycavan Man, found in February 2003, was a sensation for staff at the National Museum of Ireland, given his exceptional state of preservation. The museum's conservators were delighted with the internationally important find but were stunned when a second, even better preserved bog body was taken from the peat a few months later, this time in Co Offaly.
Old Croghan Man was scooped up by a digger and emerged as a torso and two fully intact arms and hands, but in such a state of preservation that gardaí were immediately called and a crime scene established. With two so important finds at one time, the museum wisely decided to set up an international team to study the bog bodies. Up to 30 experts from six countries were involved including museum staff and specialists from the Republic and Northern Ireland.
The results of their analysis and scientific findings are revealed today by this newspaper, in co-operation with the BBC's Timewatch programme. Timewatch followed the scientists and museum staff as they slowly pieced together the final hours of Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man. What the experts revealed was a chilling tale of torture and ritual death. Both men died violently, and the forensic analysis tells us exactly how. Yet so well preserved were the bodies that we have also learned new things about how they lived. Clonycavan Man used expensive, imported Iron Age "hair gel" and Old Croghan Man had a last meal of grain and buttermilk.
More importantly, their discovery has pointed museum staff towards a wholly new theory about the structure of Irish Iron Age society. These findings will inform future research and will help identify places where more bog bodies and artefacts might be found. It says much about the remarkable skills of those involved in the project that Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man have communicated across the centuries.