Digging the Fantastical	Volume 55 Number 1, January/February 2002
by Theo Toebosch

Medieval dumps yield the everyday items found in Heironymus Bosch's enigmatic paintings. But what about the walking bagpipe?

Surrealist. Drug addict. Heretic. Revolutionary. Art historians, theologians, and psychiatrists, among others, have all offered explanations for the bizarre paintings of medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch. Now, everyday utensils and religious mementos recovered from 500-year-old garbage dumps in Bosch's Dutch hometown of Den Bosch, about 50 miles south of Amsterdam, are showing that this gifted painter was also a man of his times.

Theo Toebosch is a Dutch journalist specializing in archaeology.

© 2002 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/0201/abstracts/bosch.html