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water was involved in the process of preservation, the results of immersion were not constant or predictable. Such observations led these authors to make comparisons with other well-preserved remains – the Grewelthorpe Moor bog body was described as ‘tanned and dried in a remarkable manner, somewhat like an Egyptian mummy’ (Lukis 1892 : ix). Leigh ( 1700 : 64) (who noted almost in passing the discovery of bodies ‘entire and uncorrupted’ from the bogs of Cheshire and Lancashire) notes the peculiar power of a ‘bituminous Turf’ from Hasil (near Ormskirk) that was
was honed by his scientific training to report on both the detail and causes of their preservation, for the audience for whom he was writing: the Royal Society. He lived at a time of increasing experimentation with embalming methods and when other well-preserved bodies were the subject of scholarly discourse and acquisition: the saintly remains that opened this chapter, lime-encrusted Romans from stone sarcophagi or the Egyptian mummies that were also unwrapped on the autopsy tables (Riggs 2014 ). As Balguy records, after the initial curiosity of reopening the