Osterby Man

Osterby Man, also known as the Osterby Head, is the preserved head of a man discovered in a peat bog near Osterby in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, in 1948. He was approximately 50 to 60 years old when he died. Only his head was recovered, together with fragments of a roe deer-skin cape. His hair survived unusually well and was tied in a distinctive Suebian knot, a hairstyle associated with the Germanic Suebi. Osterby Man suffered severe blunt-force trauma to the left side of his head and was decapitated, although the surviving remains do not establish which injury caused his death or the order in which they occurred. Radiocarbon dating of a hair sample produced a date of 75–130 CE, placing him in the Roman Iron Age, but the identification of that sample as belonging to Osterby Man has since been questioned.