They turned up around Halloween, as a roaring storm gripped the wetlands of Northern Ireland and tilled its ground: human bones, sticking up from the tea-colored water in Bellaghy bog, halfway between Derry and Belfast.
The skeletal remains were disconcerting enough.
“The skin was as pink as ours,” said Detective Inspector Nikki Deehan, with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
We know now that the remains — extraordinarily well preserved — belonged to a teenage boy from the Iron Age, held together for thousands of years by the preservative power of the peat bog.
But in the weeks before radiocarbon dating rendered the find an archaeological triumph, investigators wrestled with a more uncomfortable possibility: Was the body an echo of not-so-distant history, one with which the small island has yet to fully reckon?
Persons:
”, Nikki Deehan
Organizations:
Belfast, Police Service of Northern
Locations:
Northern Ireland, Derry, Police Service of Northern Ireland