Hidden peat field treasures 

Cutting turves out of a peat field, scooping them onto a wheelbarrow and then wheeling them to the setting field makes peat digging a tedious job. Until … CLONK! your scoop hits something solid. It sounds like metal. What could it be? You dig it up. Wow! It’s a leather pouch containing 312 silver Roman coins (1)! 

This must have been how peat cutter Thomas Duinkerken found this treasure near the village of Barger-Compascuum in 1952. Curiosities were regularly dug up from the peat fields, such as this 5000-year-old bowl (2), prehistoric bovine horns (3) and this flint dagger from the early bronze age (4).

But there were weirder findings. In 1921, Harm Bergsma was working near the village of Erica, when something that looked like a hand caught his eye. After removing the peat around it, he discovers that it is the hand of a buried human being! Harm calls in constable Grooters and, oddly enough, they decide to cut the body into pieces. Grooters gets to keep the feet and an arm (5). Why? No one knows.

These are just a few examples of the many objects and body parts that were found in the peat-digging operations. It is assumed that they were left behind on purpose, as sacrifices to the gods.