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Miscellaneous Mummies (Compendium Thread)

Turning into oil.
 
1,100-Year-Old Mummified Remains Found With Fantastic Footwear
POSTED ONAPRIL 25, 2017HISTORY 2935
archeologists-restore-1100-Year-Old-mummy-trainers-1.jpg


When archaeologists in Mongolia stumbled across the remains of a 1,100-year-old mummy, they were surprised to that the corpse was still wearing footwear that was in remarkable condition.

However, a full restoration of the mummy was still needed to get a closer look, so the remains were sent to the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia.

After a full restoration, researchers were baffled to see that the footwear still had plenty of colour and a rather similar design to modern footwear – various stripes, just like Adidas!

These aren’t the earliest designs for Adidas sneakers of course, but they did turn to be knee-high boots made from felt and leather, with an eye-catching red and black stripped pattern.

“With these stripes, when the find was made public, they were dubbed as similar to Adidas shoes with the three stripes,” explains Galbadrakh Enkhbat, director of the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia.

“In this sense, they are an interesting object of study for ethnographers, especially so when the style is very modern.”

Researchers also unearthed more about the mummified remains, which turned out to be a Turkic female seamstress, and it’s believed the she died somewhere in the Altai mountains of Mongolia due to head trauma, due to huge wound present on her skull. ...

http://themindcircle.com/1100-year-...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
1,100-Year-Old Mummified Remains Found With Fantastic Footwear
POSTED ONAPRIL 25, 2017HISTORY 2935
archeologists-restore-1100-Year-Old-mummy-trainers-1.jpg


When archaeologists in Mongolia stumbled across the remains of a 1,100-year-old mummy, they were surprised to that the corpse was still wearing footwear that was in remarkable condition.

However, a full restoration of the mummy was still needed to get a closer look, so the remains were sent to the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia.

After a full restoration, researchers were baffled to see that the footwear still had plenty of colour and a rather similar design to modern footwear – various stripes, just like Adidas!

These aren’t the earliest designs for Adidas sneakers of course, but they did turn to be knee-high boots made from felt and leather, with an eye-catching red and black stripped pattern.

“With these stripes, when the find was made public, they were dubbed as similar to Adidas shoes with the three stripes,” explains Galbadrakh Enkhbat, director of the Centre of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia.

“In this sense, they are an interesting object of study for ethnographers, especially so when the style is very modern.”

Researchers also unearthed more about the mummified remains, which turned out to be a Turkic female seamstress, and it’s believed the she died somewhere in the Altai mountains of Mongolia due to head trauma, due to huge wound present on her skull. ...

http://themindcircle.com/1100-year-...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Four or five posts up Ramon ;) ...
 
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Mummified Dog Stuck In Tree

From Georgia USA. Not a new story - it's thought the dog, Stuckie [sic], chased an animal into a hole in the bottom of the tree in 1960 then climbed up the hollow interior before getting stuck. In 1980 the tree was felled & donated to Southern Forest World museum where it's been on display ever since & Stuckie has become a star attraction.

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The real curse of the mummy.

Numerous legends of the mummy's curse are whispered in archaeological circles, most without any substance behind them, but a team of Chilean researchers may have just discovered evidence to back it up: toxic red pigment on the clothing of two ancient maiden mummies that could cause mercury poisoning in those who study the dead.

In a new article just out in the journal Archaeometry, a research team led by Bernardo Arriaza of the University of Tarapacá has identified the presence of a red mineral in the burial of two young women -- ages 9 and 18 -- at the site of Cerro Esmeralda in the city of Iquique in northern Chile. Dating to around 1399-1475 AD, the girls were found to be finely dressed, with a number of silver ornaments and ceramic vessels.

Based on the quantity and quality of these burial goods, the researchers hypothesize that this might have been a ritualized human sacrifice called capacocha carried out by the Inca state. "Capacocha sacrifices," Arriaza and colleagues explain in their paper, "were performed in commemoration of historical events in the life of the Inca emperor or in response to natural catastrophes." Interestingly, in the case of this burial at Iquique, it "was found at a lower elevation than many other capacocha sacrifices reported in the literature, which are normally found at higher elevations."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristi...ic-clothing-archaeologists-find/#60d89040690d
 
Hasn't been properly dated yet, range of almost 3,000 years.

Mexican experts find seeds, cloth around mummified child
July 30, 2018
A CAT scan of a rolled-up straw mat found in a northern Mexico cave has revealed the mummified remains of a 1 ½ year-old boy.

The country's National Institute of Anthropology and History says that researchers trying to determine the age of the funeral bundle. But the institute said Sunday that organic materials in the cave in Tamaulipas state have been dated between 1,600 B.C. and 1,200 A.D.

The child's body bore a piece of cloth, and bone and shell ornaments.

But perhaps just as interesting was a woven basket left near the body, apparently as an offering.

It contained 756 acorns and 52 ears of primitive corn, as well as squash stems.

The find may shed more light on the transition to sedentary agricultural communities in the region.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-mexican-experts-seeds-mummified-child.html#jCp
 
New analyses of burial photos from the 1960s indicate the oldest known mummies are located in Portugal. There are even older sites with evidence suggestive of mummification, but the Portuguese site's claim is attributed with considerable confidence.
World's oldest mummy found in Portugal

Roughly 60 years ago, an archaeologist snapped photos of several skeletons buried in 8,000-year-old graves in southern Portugal. Now, a new analysis of these previously undeveloped photos suggests that the oldest human mummies don't hail from Egypt or even Chile, but rather Europe.

More than a dozen ancient bodies were found in Portugal's southern Sado Valley during excavations in the 1960s, and at least one of those bodies had been mummified, possibly to make it easier to transport before its burial, researchers said after analyzing the images and visiting the burial grounds.

And there are signs that other bodies buried at the site may have also been mummified, which suggests that the practice could have been widespread in this region at this time.

Elaborate procedures of mummification were used in ancient Egypt more than 4,500 years ago, and evidence of mummification has been found elsewhere in Europe, dating from about 1000 B.C. But the newly identified mummy in Portugal is the oldest ever found and predates the previous record holders — mummies in the coastal region of Chile's Atacama Desert — by about 1,000 years. ...

Archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson of University College London, who wasn't part of the Sado Valley research, said his team had developed these techniques to identify mummification in prehistoric skeletons almost 20 years ago: "So it is very exciting to see the practice recognized elsewhere in Europe," he said.

Parker Pearson's team had found evidence for mummification in skeletons from an island in Scotland that were about 3,000 years old; and while the mummified skeleton from the Sado Valley was much older, it might not stay the oldest-known for long ...

Suggestions of 10,000-year-old mummifications had been found at El Wad and Ain Mallaha in Israel, and there were signs of mummifications 30,000 years ago at Kosteni in Belarus. "These sites are just crying out for the type of analysis carried out in this new study," he said.
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/oldest-human-mummy-found-portugal
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published study. The full report is accessible at the link below.


Peyroteo-Stjerna, R., Nilsson Stutz, L., Mickleburgh, H., & Cardoso, J. (2022).
Mummification in the Mesolithic: New Approaches to Old Photo Documentation Reveal Previously Unknown Mortuary Practices in the Sado Valley, Portugal.
European Journal of Archaeology, 1-22.
doi:10.1017/eaa.2022.3

Abstract
Recently rediscovered photographs of the remains of thirteen individuals buried in the Sado Valley Mesolithic shell middens of Poças de S. Bento and Arapouco, excavated in 1960 and 1962, show the potential of revisiting excavation archives with new methods. The analysis, which applies the principles of archaeothanatology and is enriched by experimental taphonomic research, confirmed details concerning the treatment of the dead body and provided new insights into the use of burial spaces. Some bodies may have been mummified prior to burial, a phenomenon possibly linked to their curation and transport, highlighting the significance of both the body and the burial place in Mesolithic south-western Portugal.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...ley-portugal/AC0A6815BC0DC29BC85F1F89C37F3689
 
Recently published research on a mummified 16th / 17th century infant of the noble class suggests his death was facilitated or even caused by the nobility's aversion to sunlight exposure.
Mummified Baby From Centuries Ago May Have Died From Lack of Sunlight

For centuries, the crypt of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Austria has preserved a tragic secret. A boy, perhaps no older than a year or two in age, who died not from a lack of food, or injury. But for a simple want of sunlight on his skin.

The male child was found mummified in a family crypt reserved for the Counts of Starhemberg, having been interred there somewhere between the middle of the 16th and 17th centuries. His tiny features are withered but detailed, his body still wrapped in an elaborate silk garment.

Yet, in spite of living a life of privilege, his short existence was clearly not a healthy one.

A virtual autopsy of the corpse using CT scans has revealed malformations to the ribs that resemble classical signs of malnutrition, specifically vitamin D deficiency. Known as rickets, this condition tends to result in a bowing of the legs, a feature that wasn't evident in the boy's bones.

Keeping an open mind, the researchers considered a second possibility – low amounts of vitamin C, resulting in scurvy. ...

Fat tissue analysis revealed the 10- to 18-month-year-old was overweight for his age, at least compared to other infants of the time. As a result, researchers suspect the child was well-fed in his patrician life, making vitamin C deficiency less likely.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, isn't absorbed from our food in significant amounts, but rather produced in the skin through chemical reactions that depend on ultraviolet (UV) radiation, suggesting the child was severely undernourished not for want of food, but by lack of sunlight. ...
FULL STORY (With Photo): https://www.sciencealert.com/mummified-baby-from-centuries-ago-may-have-died-from-lack-of-sunlight
Also: https://www.livescience.com/virtual-autopsy-mummified-toddler-renaissance-austria

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
Adipositas and metabolic bone disorder in a 16th century Upper Austrian infant crypt mummy—An interdisciplinary palaeopathological insight into historical aristocratic life
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.979670/full
 
Mummies are causing something of a crisis in Portugal. Owing to limited cemetery space and per the law, interred bodies are routinely exhumed and re-interred in more compact repositories after a few years (at which time they're presumed to have decomposed). The problem is that an increasing number of bodies aren't decomposing as quickly as expected, and some are mysteriously mummifying.
Random Corpses in Portugal Are Becoming Mummies, And It's Become a Real Problem

A spate of human bodies mysteriously not decomposing after burial is causing a crisis in Portugal, where bodies have been observed naturally mummifying after being buried.

Under local laws implemented to save space, bodies need to be routinely exhumed so that skeletal remains can be laid to rest in smaller containers.

But many just don't decompose, causing trauma for families whose loved ones are repeatedly unearthed only to be put back to continue decaying.

A fundamental problem is that nobody really knows what happens to bodies buried in coffins.

Scientists in Portugal are now working to uncover the cause of the strange mummifications. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/random...ecoming-mummies-and-its-become-a-real-problem
 
The war on mummies.

Mummies tend to spark feelings of the uncanny because they hover on an uncomfortable line between living and dead, between human and object.

Jason Colavito

“I don’t know if you’ve seen that mummy,” former President Bill Clinton once tastelessly joked about a 500-year-old mummified Peruvian girl nicknamed Juanita. “But you know, if I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That’s a good-looking mummy.”

Objectifying mummies has long been a concern, though rarely in quite that way. A bigger problem is the tendency to treat mummies as objects, an exploitable commodity for industry or entertainment.

Over the past few years, museums have started changing the way they talk about mummies, replacing the term “mummy” with “mummified person,” “mummified remains,” or other descriptors as a way of treating human remains with greater dignity and respect.

The issue came to the fore this week when a British tabloid accused a number of museums of going “woke” by changing their language. As the British Museum noted in a statement to CNN, the change isn’t a total ban on the word “mummy,” which is still used in the museum’s galleries.

Nevertheless, a spate of online headlines cast the changes as a ban on “mummy.” Since every effort at sensitivity is culture-war fodder, the conversation quickly turned into an argument about going “woke” instead of centering on the real issue: how we should talk about, and whether we should display, human bodies.

[IMG alt="LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - 2020/02/13: Visitors admire an ancient Egyptian mummy at the British Museum in London.
The museum, one of London's top tourist attractions, is rarely far from controversy, from its long-running refusal to comply with Greek wishes for repatriation of the Parthenon Sculptures (otherwise known as the Parthenon or Elgin Marbles), to other debates on restitution over artefacts including the Rosetta Stone (taken from Egypt) and Benin bronzes (taken from what is now Nigeria), to more recent pressure from climate activists over the institution's sponsorship ties to oil giant BP. (Photo by David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)"]https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/230123110129-01-egyptian-mummy-british-museum-file-restricted.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_144,w_256,c_fill[/IMG]

Don't say 'mummy': Why museums are rebranding ancient Egyptian remains

The display of human bodies or body parts has a long history. Sometimes it was a sign of reverence. The Inca, for example, treated the mummified bodies of their important dead as though they were alive, dressing them and presenting them with food.

The Catholic Church has filled cathedrals with the bodies and body parts of saints, which they consider holy relics fit for public viewing.

Other times the display is intentionally dehumanizing. Many a ruler has set the heads of enemies on spikes, and even into the early modern era, Western countries left the decaying bodies of executed criminals on public display as a warning and a show of power.

In English, use of the word “mummy” to mean a preserved human body dates back about 400 years, borrowed from the Latin version of an Arabic word.

But from the beginning the word was intended to put distance between the living and the dead, to turn deceased humans into objects. ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/25/opinions/museum-mummy-mummies-culture-war-colavito/index.html
 
This mummified shark's head been on sale in a shop in my home town for about a year. The asking price is £100, it's about the size of a Labrador's head and would look great in my downstairs toilet ..

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