Alfred Dieck (born April 4, 1906 in Schönebeck – January 7, 1989 in Bremen) was a German archaeologist internationally recognised for the scientific studies on bog bodies and bog finds. The results of his scientific work has been recently critically reviewed and found to be wrong in major parts.
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Alfred Dieck was born in Bad Salzelmen, a suburb of Schönebeck near the Elberiver. After he graduated school he studied theology and in 1934 he changed to prehistory and anthropology and ethnography at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg were he finished with the degree of a doctor in 1939. During World War II he was injured and returned from American imprisonment as an invalid. Both, his thesis and most of his scientific records were lost during the war. For several years he was unemployed, living in the region Bad Reichenhall and Salzburg, being the voluntary director of the International Turf Museum at Bad Wimsbach-Neydharting in Austria. Later he was employed by the German state of Lower-Saxony.
For more than 50 years Alfred Dieck worked on his archaeological bog body finds and ethnographic studies. He collected records about bog finds from archives, museums and personal conversations with people who found bog finds and their relatives. He also collected specimens and samples of hairs and clothing from European bog bodies and published more than 180 articles about ethnographic studies, bog bodies and bog finds. For many years he had been internationally recognised as one of the most reputable scientist in this field.[1]
Dieck has put a new view of sight on the interpretation of bog body finds not only being a small regional and cultural phenomena. It has been believed that bog bodies are a phenomenon of Northern Europe: Ireland, the British Islands, Denmark, Northern Germany and the Netherlands only and that most of the finds are dating to the Iron Age period only some hundred years BC and AD. Dieck clearly stated out that the earliest bog body finds dating to Mesolithic periods and the youngest to the Word War II. He also stated out that there are also fins known from Norway, Sweden, southern Germany and many other regions as well.
Alfred Dieck died 1989 in Bremen.
According to actual scientific research Alfred Dieck's publications are highly questioned by archaeological scientists. Dieck has published many finds without referencing proper sources. During his researches he raised the number of bog body finds from 120 in 1939 to 160 in 1951, 500 in 1968, 700 in 1972 and finally 1,850 bog bodies in his last summary in the year 1986. Over a period of more than 50 years Dieck published a variety of special articles about stomach and colon investigations, individuals being tattooed, scalped or being circumcised. But Dieck has never performed practical investigations on the human remains himself. He collected his information from archives, literature and travellings to museums all over Europe, from conversations with finders and their relatives. Especially in his late years Dieck has collected all information without questioning their reliability. He also cited many sources as …personally told by… or …lost during the war.[1] In relation with the studies for their Master thesis at the University of Hamburg Sabine Eisenbeiß and Katharina von Haugwitz checked the files of Alfred Diecks personal archive and comparing them with reliable sources for the finds from Lower-Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. Both came to the resume that only a small percentage of Diecks finds can be confirmed by external reliable sources, for example only 70 out of 655 bog body finds from Schleswig-Holstein presented by Alfred Dieck.[2][3] Wijnand van der Sanden checked Dieck's reports of Dutch finds and reaches the same result.[4]
During their studies in Alfred Dieck's private archive Eisenbeiß and van der Sanden came to the conclusion that Dieck created his own imaginary world in his publications, which he actually managed to maintain for many decades.[1]