After nearly a century in relative obscurity, Sicilian
mummies have now been given the attention they deserve
They have a cultural significance and they have a religious significance as well
and for me, and for the scientific community, they also
bear a wealth of biological and medical information.
Yeah, but why do you love me?
Because we've known each other forever?
I mean in the film you idiot.
Don't know, here it just says we're a couple of young nobles very much in love
but then you die of tuberculosis.
I love palaeopathology.
That is recognising the different diseases that mummies might of had during their lifetime.
My favourite mummy is Piraino number one, from the Piraino crypts.
Analysis of these remains show that the priest
died of cancer, probably in autumn. In his last days he enjoyed a rich
diet, had access to sophisticated medicine, but nevertheless had the
highest concentration of whipworm on record.
I look at parasites in mummies as a little mummy
within a mummy because there's oftentimes
a juvenile worm within its egg, within a mummy, within a sarcophagus. So that's kind of cool.
Even tiny parasites can give us a glimpse
into the lives of ancient people.
For example, these lice eggs known as knits, found in 1,000-year-old Peruvian mummies are much
more abundant in men, who had their hair braided and wore hats, but
much less common in women, and even less so in children.
Probably due to the attention lavished upon them by their nitpicking parents.
So when you analyse a population of mummies, then you have a health history, dietary
history that goes with an individual of a known sex, known age, known status, known culture.
So the mummies therefore become a nice statistical population from
which one can derive epidemiological data.
So they allow you to transport back in
time to reconstruct the mundane parts of life like food, which was actually
really important of course.
And that's the whole point of archaeology is to reconstruct
the culture, and the mummies are a mechanism of doing that.
Every year the students and researchers at the mummy school
undertake new research to help them better understand Sicilian mummies
This year we'll be air sampling for fungal spores and we're also doing 3D
architecture scans to understand the airflow that answers the new
question, how did people make mummies in ancient times and what
is causing the mummies to decompose today.
Some of the crypts have been modified for example the staircase over there, the airflow
has changed, and with the change in airflow it has affected some of the
preservation of the mummies.
And here we have tissue preservation.
And this is where you can get... And which one's better for samples?
I would say this one because here you
can get soft tissue, as well as bone samples in case you wanted,
and I wouldn't bother to sample those that are completely preserved, because I would
feel like I'm breaking something. We have to make sure they last for
future generations as witnesses of the past.
Thanks for everything.
Bye thanks.
Bye.
You sure I can't give you a lift?
Yeah sure let's do it another time.
OK. But let's keep in touch this time.
OK.
Look forward to it.
Bye
Bye.
What's it like for you as a researcher, looking death in the face in
this way, I mean most people shy away from thinking or talking about death.
These people died so much time ago that sometimes
we feel they are far away from us, but
simply because the fact that they are dead, doesn't erase
the humanity that they had before. They were people like us, they had
lives, they had friends and family members who loved them.
This is probably why I'm not scared of them. I feel like we are sharing something.
You got a spare helmet?
Yeah sure.
Where do you want to go?
Doesn't matter.