Occasionally, police investigators find themselves announcing archaeological discoveries, rather than criminal findings. In 1984, for example, police oversaw the recovery of the Iron Age bog body (a naturally mummified corpse found in a peat bog) later called “Lindow Man” in Cheshire, UK. On January 25, 2024, the Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) found themselves doing just that.

The civilian discovery, and subsequent PSNI excavation, of a 2,000 year old bog body at Bellaghy, in the Londonderry county of Northern Ireland, is significant because of the rarity of prehistoric human remains that include soft tissue preservation. As with The Lindow Man, the initial investigations were conducted by the police in case the remains were those of a recent murder victim – making the location a crime scene rather than an archaeological site.

It was only following radiocarbon dating of the remains from Bellaghy that the body, by then identified as that of a young male, was shown to have lived during the Iron Age.