An 800-Year-Old Mummy Buried In South America Has Unique Face Tattoos
An 800-year-old mummy buried in South America was found to have particularly unique tattoo designs inked into its face.
For thousands of years, humans have been decorating their bodies with permanent art, but evidence of the artwork is often lost to time.
But in South America, preserved tattoos are relatively common among ancient mummies. They were usually buried in coastal deserts, and the arid environments helped protect skin tissue from decay.
A team of researchers from the University of Turin in Italy examined the mummified remains of a woman more closely.
The exact origin of this mummy is unclear because her body was donated almost a century ago to the Italian Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography with little to no information.
Only the Italian donor’s name was known. She was filed under “South American artifacts” at the museum.
However, the way that her body was positioned may offer some clues as to where she came from. She was seated upright with her knees bent, suggesting a state of preservation called “fardo,” in which the corpse is wrapped in multiple layers of fabric and then tied into a bundle.
This funerary practice was common in the Paracas culture in the Andean region on the south coast of Peru. According to radiocarbon dating of the textile fragments on the mummy’s body, she lived between 1215 and 1382 C.E. Her dark skin, due to the mummification process, made it hard to see the tattoos.
The research team used various non-invasive imaging techniques to observe the designs more clearly. One of her wrists is adorned with an S-shaped tattoo, which was a standard placement for tattoos in South American cultures back then. The mummy also had curious-looking cheek tattoos, which are not as typical.
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“The three detected lines of tattooing are relatively unique: in general, skin marks on the face are rare among the groups of the ancient Andean region and even rarer on the cheeks,” reported the researchers.
A chemical analysis indicated that the black ink of the tattoo was made from magnetite, a black, metallic, and magnetic iron ore.
The find was out of the ordinary because that kind of pigment had never been documented in any South American mummies before. Additionally, black tattoo ink is usually assumed to be made from charcoal.
“The intentional use of only charcoal pigments, which are the most commonly used materials according to the literature, can be ruled out in this case,” wrote the researchers.
“The results highlight the presence of magnetite, a commonly used material both in present and past cultures, as well as of other iron-rich phases of the pyroxene silicates group…with a small amount of carbon-based materials, possibly not intentionally added (e.g. due to pigment preparation procedures).”
The study was published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.
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