Man accused of smuggling animal mummies and figurines of Horus and Thoth (bbc.co.uk) 

"An Australian man has been arrested at Cairo airport after security staff found ancient Egyptian animal mummies in his luggage, reports say. An airport official said the mummies of a cat and an ibis, a long-beaked bird, dated back to 300 BC. He said another 19 figurines of ancient Egyptian gods were also found in the passenger's bags. The man has been charged with smuggling antiquities, which can carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. According to the Associated Press, an antiquity official at the airport described the seizure as rare because of the number of items involved and their age. The figurines found in the passenger's luggage were of the Egyptian gods Horus and Thoth...."

Ancient mummy named Meresamun is first patient for speedy new Chicago CT scanner (chicagotribune.com) 

Casket that held Big Bopper's preserved body going up for sale on eBay (beaumontenterprise.com) 

"Rock 'n' roll's most macabre historical artifact will go on the block when the family of the late 1950s pop star J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson auctions his casket on eBay sometime in the next few weeks - almost 50 years after "the day the music died." The Big Bopper's 16-gauge steel casket was exhumed last year from his original grave at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont so it could be moved to a more visible location with a life-sized statue and historic marker. The disinterment also offered forensic experts a chance - with his family's blessing - to examine the pop singer's unautopsied remains after his death in rock 'n' roll's first great tragedy. On Feb. 3, 1959, Richardson died at age 28 in the crash of a small plane in a field near Clear Lake, Iowa, that also killed 1950s rock stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and sent a shock wave around the world.... Richardson was buried a few days later in his Beaumont hometown with great fanfare, including tributes from Elvis Presley and others. Jay Richardson, the Bopper's son, plans to sell the empty casket on eBay to raise money for a musical show about his father and to keep the Bopper's memory alive. Born three months after the crash, Jay, who lives in Katy, never met his father in life - but saw him for the first time at his exhumation.... The exhumed casket is in surprisingly good condition after 48 years in the muddy gumbo of Southeast Texas. It bears minor rust spots and a white lime stain showing where several inches of water once leaked into the surrounding vault, but there was no evidence water had ever seeped into the casket itself. Inside, forensic examiners found the Big Bopper's well-preserved corpse, dressed in a black suit and a blue-and-gray striped tie. He wore socks, but no shoes. Most remarkably, his thick brown hair was still perfectly coiffed in his familiar, 1950s flat-top. After the 2007 autopsy found he died of crash-related injuries, the Big Bopper was reburied in a sleek new casket donated by the Batesville Casket Co., which made the original. Since late last year, the old casket has been on public display at the Texas Musicians Museum in Hillsboro, Texas...." 

More details released about world tour of 60 Guanajuato mummies (reuters.com) 

Archaeologists find preserved 2,000-year-old brain in Yorkshire (signonsandiego.com) 

"British archaeologists have unearthed an ancient skull carrying a startling surprise – an unusually well-preserved brain. Scientists said Friday that the mass of gray matter was more than 2,000 years old – the oldest ever discovered in Britain. One expert unconnected with the find called it "a real freak of preservation." The skull was severed from its owner sometime before the Roman invasion of Britain and found in a muddy pit during a dig at the University of York in northern England this fall, according to Richard Hall, a director of York Archaeological Trust. Finds officer Rachel Cubbitt realized the skull might contain a brain when she felt something move inside the cranium as she was cleaning it, Hall said. She looked through the skull's base and spotted an unusual yellow substance inside. Scans at York Hospital confirmed the presence of brain tissue. Hall said it was unclear just how much of the brain had survived, saying the tissue had apparently contracted over the years. Parts of the brain have been tentatively identified, but more research was needed, he said. He said it was a mystery why the skull was buried separately from its body, suggesting human sacrifice and ritual burial as possible explanations...."

Scientists reconstruct last hours of Pompeii family in House of Julius Polybius (discovery.com) 

"Italian researchers have reconstructed the last hours in Pompeii of a dozen people who managed to survive Mount Vesuvius' devastating eruption for more than 19 hours. Volcanologist Claudio Scarpati, and colleagues Giuseppe Luongo and Annamaria Perrotta of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, analyzed layers of volcanic deposits in a Pompeian house and examined 13 skeletons found there on a carpet of pumice to reconstruct the events that occurred when the eruption was in progress. The team reported their findings at a recent international conference on ancient DNA in Naples. Located in Pompeii's main street, Via dell'Abbondanza, the home of Julius Polybius is one of the most studied in the ancient Roman town. "This house has yielded rich and diverse archaeological findings. Moreover, it features the most complete stratified sections of Pompeii's volcanic deposit," Scarpati told Discovery News. At around 1:00 p.m. on Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Pompeii residents saw a pine tree-shaped column of smoke bursting from Vesuvius. Reaching nine miles into the sky, the column began spewing a thick pumice rain. Many residents rushed in the streets, trying to leave the city.... By examining the density of volcanic deposits in relation to an accumulation rate of six inches per hour, the researchers concluded that it took up to six hours for the roofs of Polybius' house to collapse. At around 7:00 p.m., by which time the front part the house had collapsed, the inhabitants took shelter in the rear rooms, whose steeper roofs had not been damaged by the falling material. "There were three adult males, three adult females of various ages, four boys, one girl, one child and one fetus in the last month of intrauterine life. The fetus was associated with the skeleton of a young (16 to 18-year-old) female," Scarpati said. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the maternal line, revealed that six individuals belonged to the same family.... Cipollaro's analysis also revealed that two related subjects suffered from spina bifida, a birth defect resulting in an incomplete closure of the spinal column.... Polybius' family perished in their home's back rooms...."

'Fantastic find': 8,000-year-old string from Stone Age settlement on Isle of Wight (telegraph.co.uk) 

The mossy details about Ötzi's last meal (sciencedaily.com) 

"What we eat can say a lot about us - where we live, how we live and eventually even when we lived. From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have traveled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. The Iceman is the first glacier mummy to have fragments of mosses in his intestine. This is surprising as mosses are neither palatable nor nutritious and there are few reports of mosses used for internal medical treatments. Rather, mosses recovered from archaeological sites tend to have been used for stuffing, wiping and wrapping. Dickson and colleagues studied the moss remains from the intestines of the Iceman on microscope slides, to find out more about his lifestyle and events during the last few days of his life. Their paper describes in detail the six different mosses identified and seeks to provide answers to two key questions in each case. Firstly, where did the Iceman come in contact with each species; secondly, how did each come to enter his alimentary tract...."

Journal article by James Dickson, et al, in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (Volume 18, Number 1 / January, 2009); abstract at this link

More on Ötzi's intestinal analysis (msnbc.msn.com)