Lindow Man on display at Great North Museum in Newcastle (journallive.co.uk)

"The body of Lindow Man, remarkably preserved after 2,000 years in a Cheshire peat bog, will be the focus of the Great North Museum’s first major exhibition, which opens on Saturday until November 29. Nicknamed Pete Marsh, he is on loan from the British Museum. Newcastle is the only city in the UK, apart from Manchester, where he has been on show. Lindow Man was discovered in August 1984 when workmen were cutting peat at Lindow Moss bog. The bog conditions meant that the man’s skin, hair and many of his internal organs are well preserved. He is housed in a special case which allows temperature and humidity to be carefully controlled so that no decay takes place. Great North Museum curator Steve McLean said: “We are thrilled to get this amazing loan from the British Museum, particularly on the 25th anniversary of his discovery and we are looking forward to the response of our visitors to this fantastic exhibition.” Lindow Man was accompanied on his journey to Newcastle by Jody Joy, curator of Iron Age collections at the British Museum, who has written a book on the man from the distant past...."

Mummified female shaman from Opata culture discovered in Sonoran cave (artdaily.org)

"Researchers of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered in a cave at Sierra Madre Occidental (Western Mountain Range), in Bavispe municipality, Sonora, a feminine mummified burial dated between 17th and 18th centuries. The characteristics of the offering point out that she might have been a healing woman from Opata culture, now extinct. Mario Gonzalez Valenzuela, director of Sonora INAH Center informed that the body showed evidence of being tied up, gagged, placed in a mortuary sack and covered with matting as part of a ritual. Vestiges of vegetal fibers, a decorated ceramic bowl and rests of a cremated infant were found as part of the offering. He remarked that if confirmed that the burial belongs to the Colonial period, it would be the first evidence of Opata funerary tradition, the largest ethnic group in Sonora during the 17th century. The corps mummified due to natural conditions of humidity and temperature of Sierra Madre Occidental caves, which allow conservation of organic material...."

Aristocrat's well-preserved remains may hold swine flu key (thisishullandeastriding.co.uk)

"Scientists believe a an East Riding aristocrat who died 90 years ago could be the key to understanding the swine flu epidemic. Driffield-based Sir Mark Sykes, a Tory MP, soldier and diplomat, was one of 50 million people killed when Spanish flu swept the world in 1918. He was exhumed last year at St Mary's, in Sledmere, in the hope that the Spanish virus could help them understand bird flu. All three strains are part of the H1N1 virus but Spanish flu is thought to be the first. The importance of Sir Mark's remains lies in the fact that he was buried in a lead-lined coffin, which had preserved body tissue. A team led by one of the world's leading virologists, Professor John Oxford, of Queen Mary's School of Medicine, London, will study samples taken from the grave. They hope to piece together the genetic make-up of Spanish flu, leading to a better understanding of how it attacks...."

Egyptian experts to help conserve mummy in Hyderabad museum (twocircles.net)

"Expert assistance from Egypt is finally on its way to conserve an Egyptian mummy dating back to 2,500 BC at a museum here. The mummy, believed to be of Nasihu, daughter of sixth Pharaoh of Egypt, is on display at the Andhra Pradesh State Archaeological Museum here since 1930 but is now decaying. A two-member team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Egypt, will visit Hyderabad for conservation of the mummy. The department of archaeology and museum of Andhra Pradesh has long been seeking foreign assistance to restore the mummy, one of the six in Indian museums and the only one in south India. Tarek El Awdy, head of the research department at the SCA, and Sama Mohamed El Marghani, director general of Treatment of Biological Damage at SCA, will first make an assessment of the work needed to be done for preservation of Nasihu's embalmed body.... "

Looted remains, some mummified, of Buffalo soldiers to be reburied in Santa Fe (kob.com)

"A piece of American history lies just south of Socorro. Established in 1854, Fort Craig played a key role in the Civil War. In 2004, archaeologists found out the cemetery had been looted, so three years later, they exhumed 64 bodies including soldiers, women and children. One unearthed skull belongs to Private Thomas Smith, a Buffalo Soldier and one of three soldiers that archaeologists have been able to identify. Mark Hungerford helped dig up the remains. He says at least one looter dug up some of the bodies, looking for valuables and taking some of the remains. "There was a man who had a skull and for the past 25 years or so had this skull in his possession and had displayed it in his house along with a few other human bones he had dug up," Hungerford said. Investigators say that man was Dee Brecheisen, who has since died. A friend of Brecheisen from the 1970s told investigators he was shown mummified remains of a Black soldier, which were anonymously returned to investigators a few years ago...."

The mummy of evangelical George Whitefield (christianitytoday.com)

"Anyone looking for the burial site of George Whitefield, the bigger-than-life 18th-century evangelist who paved the way for American revivalists from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, needs to have good eyes and perseverance to find it here in the small seaside city of Newburyport, Massachusetts. That's because no signage exists to help visitors locate his tomb beneath the pulpit of "Old South" First Presbyterian Church, which organized in 1742 in response to a Whitefield-led revival in a nearby field. Newburyport's chamber of commerce doesn't list the crypt among its historic sites. Only an 8.5 x 11 inch computer printout, taped to a side door of the church, tells Whitefield fans that they've reached their destination.... Evangelicals walk a fine line in journeying to pay homage to Whitefield (pronounced "WIT-field"), a Calvinist who scorned pilgrimage and veneration of relics as so much "works righteousness." "Human beings collect relics and associate with tombs," says Tom O'Loughlin, a pilgrimage expert at the University of Wales-Lampeter. "So you have the classic pilgrimage basis there, but it's for a preacher who would have been shocked and annoyed [by the practice]. That's an interesting irony: You can preach a theology as long as you like, but human nature will reassert itself." Yet 239 years after the Grand Itinerant died while passing through Newburyport, his tomb's custodians and visitors alike are finding a way to honor his legacy as well as their own traditions. The key, it seems, lies in the tomb's remarkably low profile, which belies its international drawing power. This subtlety helps mitigate tensions that enduringly surround the site. And after centuries of trial and error at Whitefield's gravesite, his admirers may at last be learning that in Protestant shrine keeping, sometimes less is more.... "

Preserved head of African chief returned to Ghana after 171 years by Dutch government (msnbc.msn.com)

"The descendants of an African chief who was hanged and decapitated by a Dutch general 171 years ago reluctantly accepted the return of his severed head Thursday, still angry even as the Dutch tried to right a historic wrong. The head of King Badu Bonsu II was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde gathering dust in the anatomical collection of the Leiden University Medical Center. The Dutch government, embarrassed by its discovery, agreed to Ghanaian demands that the relic be returned. On Thursday, members of the king's Ahanta tribe, dressed in dark robes and wearing red sashes, took part in the hand-over ceremony, honoring his spirit by toasting with Dutch gin and then sprinkling the drink over the floor at the Dutch Foreign Ministry. But descendants of the chief said they were not consoled...."

Additional article about the repatriation ceremony (afrik.com)

Nine pre-Incan mummies found in huaca near Lima (laht.com)

"Peruvian archaeologists said Wednesday that they found nine burial sites in a “huaca,” a pre-Inca pyramid-like construction, in Lima’s Magdalena del Mar neighborhood. “There are nine individuals, one lying stretched out and the rest in a fetal position,” archaeologist Roberto Quispe told Efe, adding that each of the bodies, which were discovered last week in the Huantille huaca, was covered with up to three cloth capes. Along with the individuals buried in a fetal position were found ceramic vessels or gourd bowls. Although more detailed analysis must still be done to determine their origin, it is presumed that the people who were buried there were members of the Ishma culture, which flourished between 1000 and 1400 along Peru’s central coast and was centered on the town of Pachacamac, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Lima. The individual buried lying on his back was interred during the last years that the Huantille huaca was used, Quispe said...."

Additional article with photos (reuters.com)

33 Peruvian mummies 'were human sacrifices' (sbs.com.au)

"The head of a team of archaeologists examining 33 mummies found in Peru says the bodies were human sacrifices. Utah University professor Haagen Klaus is an expert in bio-archaeology and has been analyzing and examining the human remains found in 2007 at the Chotuna Huaca, a site located north east of Chiclayo. "(The) majority of them were sacrificed using a very sharp bladed instrument, probably a copper or bronze tummy knife. And for the majority there are a several combinations, complex set of variations on cutting of the throat, " Mr Klaus said. Sacrifices were made "to make sure that there would still be rain and agricultural fertility", Klaus explained. What made the discovery so unusual in the eyes of the experts was that most of the mummies were females. "The blood sacrifice of a large group of women is something that is very, very unusual, it is the first time we have ever seen this", Mr Klaus said. In fact, 30 of the 33 bodies were female and according to Klaus they were all very young when they were sacrificed. The majority hadn't reached 15-years-old and some of the mummies were children no older than nine. Professor Klaus explained that in Andean society children weren't considered human beings. "Children are not human beings because human life comes from mountains...."

World's oldest tattoos were made of soot (newscientist.com)

"For those inclined to put ink to flesh, modern tattoo parlors offer dizzying arrays of dyes – mercury-containing reds, manganese purples, even pigments that glow in the dark. Getting inked wasn't always quite so complicated, however. A new analysis concludes that the world's oldest tattoos were etched in soot. Belonging to Ötzi the 5300 year old Tyrolean iceman, the simple tattoos may have served a medicinal purpose, not a decorative one, says Maria Anna Pabst, a researcher at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, who trained optical and electron microscopes on biopsies of Ötzi's preserved flesh. Clothing would have obscured most of the designs, which are of crosses and bands of lines. Some are located near acupuncture points. Alpine climbers discovered Ötzi near the Italian-Austrian border in 1991. Since then, scientists have analyzed his clothing, diagnosed him with various ailments – arthritis, back and stomach problems – and even sequenced his mitochondrial genome. To work out what Ötzi's tattoos were made of, Pabst's team applied light and electron microscopes to minutely thin sections of several tattoos as well as a non-tattooed flesh from his inner thigh...."

No charges filed in mummified body case, pending test results (startribune.com)

"A St. Anthony man is out of the Hennepin County jail a few days after a partly mummified body was found in his house. John Allen Knutson, 61, was released Monday night. He had been booked on probable cause of murder Friday after a woman's body was found in his garbage-filled house in the 3100 block of Bell Avenue NE. Neighbors said a woman who lived with Knutson hadn't been seen in weeks. St. Anthony Police Chief John Ohl said an autopsy had been performed on the body, but its condition made it hard to determine anything. Without any findings, no charges were filed, he said. Authorities are still investigating. Ohl said the next step is a deep tissue analysis of the body, which will take two or three weeks. Authorities were having a difficult time finding any relatives of the woman, Ohl said, so an official identification was not available for release. Knutson, who St. Anthony police have said suffers from mental illness, is well-known to police after a number of less serious brushes with the law through the years...."

Britain's oldest human brain discovered (bbc.co.uk)

"Archaeologists have found the remains of what could be Britain's oldest surviving human brain. The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped. Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilized brain. The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago. More tests will now be done to establish what it is actually made of. The team from York Archaeological Trust had been commissioned by the university to carry out an exploratory dig at Heslington East, where campus extension work is under way...."

Ancient mummified horse goes on display (adn.com)

"The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center in Whitehorse is displaying the 26,000-year-old horse found by placer miners in the Klondike in 1993. The horse, billed as "the best preserved specimen of a mummified, extinct large mammal ever found in Canada," has become an exhibit at the center after scientific analysis of the carcass and restoration of its hide. The Yukon horses ranged from modern-day Alaska to Canada's Northwest Territories until about 12,000 years ago...."

Mummified dinosaur skin of 'Dakota' yields new secrets (sciencedaily.com)

"Scientists from The University of Manchester have identified preserved organic molecules in the skin of a dinosaur that died around 66-million years ago. The well-preserved fossil of the plant-eating hadrosaur – known as ‘Dakota’ – has been analysed by researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The team report how the fossil's soft tissues were spared from decay by fine sediments that formed a mineral cast. A wide range of tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures, although the constituent proteins have decayed. Advanced imaging and chemical techniques have revealed that the mummified duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin – just like the skin of modern birds and reptiles, which scientists believe are closely related to duckbilled dinosaurs. They believe the hippo-sized Dakota fell into a watery grave, with little oxygen present to speed along the decay process. Meanwhile, very fine sediments reacted with the soft tissues of the animal, forming a kind of cement. As a result, the 66 million-year-old fossil still retains some of the organic matter of the original dinosaur, mixed in with the minerals...."

Nuclear science unravels mummy mysteries (iaea.org)

"Was King Tut really murdered? Did the Great Pharaoh Ramesses II die from a disease of the spine? The answers to these age-old mysteries are locked inside Egyptian mummies. Today, they are being unravelled through the modern science of "paleoradiology". Paleoradiology uses nuclear technologies such as X-rays, computed tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to study artifacts, skeletons, mummies and fossils. Many museums worldwide use the nuclear technologies to discover otherwise hidden details that piece together historic puzzles. Dr. Rethy Chhem, Director of the IAEA Division of Human Health, has read more than 150,000 skeleton studies in clinical practice and is an expert on the use of paleoradiology. He says the science is a key that gives radiologists insights into former lives of mummies, uncovering details such as the sex, age of death and illnesses...."