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# Bronze Age bodies assembled from several people: the mummies of Cladh Hallan
- URL: https://thehistoriesfiles.com/cladh-hallan-composite-bronze-age-mummies/
- Published: 2026-10-25T07:30:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T07:30:16.000Z
- Description: Two skeletons found under Bronze Age roundhouse floors on South Uist were built from the bones of several people, and the excavators' papers say they were mummified first. Here is what the journals show and what they leave open.
- Author: J E Cowie
- Tags: News

In 2001, on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, archaeologists led by Mike Parker Pearson, then of the University of Sheffield, found two unusual skeletons beneath the floor of a 3,000-year-old house, Archaeology Magazine reported in 2010\. Popular Science revisited the story on 23 October 2026\. Its account is lively, but it blends points the journal papers support with points they don't. This article sets out what the published research says.

![Map showing where Cladh Hallan is](https://thehistoriesfiles.com/content/images/2026/10/map_cladh-hallan.jpg)

Cladh Hallan, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

## The assumption that was overturned

The abstract of the first of the team's papers in *Antiquity* (2005) opens on a belief. Ancient Egyptians, it says, were thought to have been the only people in the Old World practising mummification in the Bronze Age, which it dates to roughly 2200–700 BC. The authors argued that finds from "a remote Scottish island" indicated that Ancient Britons were performing similar, if less elaborate, practices of bodily preservation. They said the skeletons from Cladh Hallan were buried several hundred years after death and provided evidence of post-mortem manipulation of body parts.

## Bodies made from more than one person

Cladh Hallan is a Bronze Age–Iron Age settlement. A 2012 paper in the *Journal of Archaeological Science* describes skeletons of two adults, a sub-adult and a child buried beneath the foundations of three roundhouses. Osteological and isotopic evidence had already shown that the adult male skeleton is a composite of parts of at least three different individuals. Archaeology Magazine describes it as the torso and limbs of one man, the skull of another and a jawbone from a third, who had died over a span of 150 years.

Hanna and colleagues then tested whether the female skeleton was also a composite. They examined ancient mitochondrial DNA from four components: the skull, mandible, right humerus and right femur. They attempted seven PCRs and obtained 55 sequences from cloned products. After excluding possible contaminating sequences, they compared the remaining 34\. They concluded that the mandible, humerus and femur come from different individuals. For the skull, they wrote: "Insufficient data were obtained to draw conclusions regarding the origin of the skull."

That last point matters because Popular Science says the woman "had a man's skull where her own head used to be". The 2012 DNA study could not settle where the skull came from, and Archaeology Magazine describes a borrowed skull only for the male skeleton. A 2015 paper in *Antiquity* does refer to the female burial as a "composite female-male skeleton", though the passage that uses the phrase does not say which element was male. What the 2012 abstract does support is the scale of the reconstruction: at least three individuals behind the man and different individuals behind three of the woman's four tested bones. That is consistent with Popular Science's figure of "at least six people".

Archaeology Magazine adds that the woman had two of her teeth removed and placed in her hands after death.

## How researchers decided they were mummies

Soft tissue did not survive, so the case rests on the bones. Archaeology Magazine explains that when a body decays, gut bacteria break down tissue and bore tiny holes in bone. At Cladh Hallan, the team found that decomposition had begun and then stopped. The 2015 *Antiquity* paper by Booth, Chamberlain and Parker Pearson reports the same pattern from microscopic work on the male skeleton's femur: only limited bacterial tunnelling, "indicating that initial putrefactive activity was arrested". A similar conclusion was reached for the female skeleton. Animal bones from the same shell-sand sediments at Cladh Hallan showed extensive bacterial alteration.

Two further lines of evidence point to a bog. The skeletons were recovered from alkaline sediments, yet earlier infrared and X-ray scattering analyses found that the mineral crystals near the bone surfaces had been altered in a way consistent with acidic dissolution. The 2015 paper says this was used to suggest preservation in an acidic peat bog, and that a bog body from Derrycashel in County Roscommon, Ireland, provides further support. Archaeology Magazine reports that the team put the bodies' time in a bog at 6 to 18 months, and that they were then removed, wrapped and displayed for hundreds of years. The 2015 paper is more guarded on wrapping: it says the tightly flexed positions suggest the bodies "may have been wrapped".

## Why build a body from several people?

Here the papers speak in hedges. Hanna and colleagues wrote that "the merging of identities may have been a deliberate act, perhaps designed to amalgamate different ancestries into a single lineage." Booth and colleagues suggest that a growing role for deceased ancestors in legitimating rights over land and property is perhaps more plausible as a motive than the arrival of metalworking and other Bronze Age innovations.

Popular Science goes further. It says archaeologists surmise the mummies were kept above ground, maybe in a special place in the house. The 2005 paper says the skeletons were buried several hundred years after death, and Archaeology Magazine says they spent hundreds of years out of the ground, displayed in a warm, dry, presumably sacred place. But neither the 2005 nor the 2015 paper's abstract places them inside a house, and Archaeology Magazine doesn't say so either. The magazine suggests the two may have been rulers or prominent people and that ancestor worship was strong, and says the finds leave mysteries, such as why one body was a composite and why the bodies were eventually buried. Jacqui Mulville of Cardiff University, whom Archaeology Magazine described as a co-director of the project, told it: "This raises more questions than it answers."

## Not just one island

The 2015 paper argues that Cladh Hallan was not unique. In a dataset of British Bronze Age human bone, 16 of 34 samples showed the unusual arrested pattern of bacterial damage. The authors' simplest explanation is that Bronze Age populations throughout Britain mummified a proportion of their dead. They add that the criteria for selection are not yet certain. They also say the method cannot be used on skeletons from waterlogged contexts, which can produce a similar pattern, and that the two waterlogged Bronze Age skeletons they sampled must remain uncertain.

They also suggest that methods varied. Skeletons from Neat's Court in Kent showed discolouration and fissuring consistent with low-level heat, which the authors say suggests mummification by smoking. For the skeletons from Canada Farm in Dorset, they raise the possibility of evisceration.

My view: the strongest part of this story is the least dramatic. The claim that a Bronze Age community in the Hebrides mummified, curated and rebuilt its dead rests on bone microscopy, radiocarbon dating and DNA, all in peer-reviewed papers. The "why" is still inference, and it deserves to be labelled that way.

![a landscape view of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland](https://thehistoriesfiles.com/content/images/2026/10/shot2_a-landscape-view-of-south-uist-in-the-ou.jpg)

South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland's western coast.

## Sources

Booth, T.J., Chamberlain, A.T. and Parker Pearson, M. (2015) 'Mummification in Bronze Age Britain', Antiquity, 89(347), pp. 1155–1173, published online 9 October 2015, doi: 10.15184/aqy.2015.111, available at: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mummification-in-bronze-age-britain/738F5B39B75741D162FD22E1B1586E73](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/mummification-in-bronze-age-britain/738F5B39B75741D162FD22E1B1586E73?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (Accessed: 24 October 2026).

Goldfield, A. (2026) 'At Scotland's ancient Cladh Hallan, homes were full of human bones', Popular Science, 23 October 2026, available at: [https://www.popsci.com/science/scotland-mummies-cladh-hallan/](https://www.popsci.com/science/scotland-mummies-cladh-hallan/?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (Accessed: 24 October 2026).

Hanna, J., Bouwman, A.S., Brown, K.A., Parker Pearson, M. and Brown, T.A. (2012) 'Ancient DNA typing shows that a Bronze Age mummy is a composite of different skeletons', Journal of Archaeological Science, 39(8), pp. 2774–2779, August 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.030, available at: [https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publications/ancient-dna-typing-shows-that-a-bronze-age-mummy-is-a-composite-o/](https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publications/ancient-dna-typing-shows-that-a-bronze-age-mummy-is-a-composite-o/?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (Accessed: 24 October 2026).

Lobell, J.A. and Patel, S.S. (2010) 'Cladh Hallan', Archaeology Magazine, 63(3), May/June 2010, available at: [https://archive.archaeology.org/1005/bogbodies/cladh\_hallan.html](https://archive.archaeology.org/1005/bogbodies/cladh%5Fhallan.html?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (Accessed: 24 October 2026).

Parker Pearson, M., Chamberlain, A., Craig, O., Marshall, P., Mulville, J., Smith, H., et al. (2005) 'Evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain', Antiquity, 79(305), pp. 529–546, September 2005 (published online 10 March 2015), doi: 10.1017/S0003598X00114486, available at: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/evidence-for-mummification-in-bronze-age-britain/E9B55A7BBEE01E4BA90B58911C9C370D](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/evidence-for-mummification-in-bronze-age-britain/E9B55A7BBEE01E4BA90B58911C9C370D?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (Accessed: 24 October 2026).

## Picture credits

- Top picture: The roundhouse remains at Cladh Hallan, South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides. Image: One of the excavated houses at Cladh Hallan — Sandy Gerrard, [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com), via geograph.org.uk / [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:One%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fexcavated%5Fhouses%5Fat%5FCladh%5FHallan%5F-%5Fgeograph.org.uk%5F-%5F6726708.jpg?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com)
- South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland's western coast. Image: Atlantic coast of South Uist — John Knight, [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com), via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic%5Fcoast%5Fof%5FSouth%5FUist.jpg?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com)
- Map: drawn from [Natural Earth](https://www.naturalearthdata.com/?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com) (public domain) and [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q496371?ref=thehistoriesfiles.com).