Bog, Book, Body: an Assosciative Archaeology of Lindow Moss

<i>Bog, Book, Body</i> explores the peat bog and its bodies as symbols in the British cultural imagination. It takes the form of 45 interlocking and self-referential segments, including field notes, autobiography, site photography, and historical analyses. Each segment becomes a cordoned off area of bogland, an attempt at finding Malika’s still-missing body, documentation of an absence. I follow the story of Lindow Woman as she leads us to the unearthing of three more Iron Age bog bodies, who then eclipse her in the landscape of British archaeological discovery. Through the course of my search, the physical bodies become layered with their paper bodies, as their archival and literary doubles become emergent and assertive. I draw on experiences of sifting through the historical sediment of Canterbury, disembodying pain on the Fens of Cambridgeshire, and my current artistic practice of bookbinding to expose my identification and empathy with the bog bodies.