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CBC
04-08-2025
- Science
- CBC
Imaging reveals 2,000-year-old ice mummy's 'incredibly impressive' tattoos
Social Sharing More than two millennia ago, a woman sat for hours on end in the ancient grasslands of a Siberian mountain range to have her body adorned with elaborate tattoos of creatures both real and mythical. When she died, her body was preserved under the permafrost for thousands of years, but her tattoos faded and became invisible to the naked eye. Now researchers have used high-resolution, near-infrared photography to bring those ancient tattoos back to life and worked with modern tattoo artists to shed light on the tools and techniques that made them possible to begin with. "These tattoos are incredibly impressive," Daniel Riday, a traditional tattoo artist from Les Eyzies, France, who worked on the research, told As It Happen s guest host Rebecca Zandbergen. "This kind of research is almost a direct window into the past ... and it's very humbling to really be so close to the roots of this practice." The findings are published in the journal Antiquity. 'A very technical skill' Tattooing is a long-standing practice in many cultures around the world, with the oldest known tattoos dating back 5,300 years to Ötzi the Iceman, a prehistoric hunter whose tattoo-clad remains were found preserved in glaciers in the Italian Alps in 1991. But it's a difficult field to study because preserved tattoos on human flesh, like Ötzi's, are exceedingly rare. For this study, researchers looked at the remains of a 50-year-old woman from the Pazyryk culture, Iron Age pastoral people who lived in the Altai Mountains of Central and East Asia. She's one of several Pazyryk ice mummies whose remains were found preserved inside the mountain's ice tombs in the 19th century. Scientists have long known that the Pazyryk mummies were tattooed, but it was impossible to study the faded images in real detail. "Prior scholarship focused primarily on the stylistic and symbolic dimensions of these tattoos, with data derived largely from hand-drawn reconstructions," Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and the study's senior author, said in a press release. But three-dimensional scans of the Pazyryk woman's tattoos have revealed them in stunning detail. On her thumb sits a rooster with swirling tail-feathers. Her left arm bears a mythical griffon attacking a large stag, while an elaborate scene of leopards and tigers hunting two deer with intricate antlers is on her right forearm. The latter, Riday said, is particularly impressive and likely would have taken two sessions of four or five hours each to complete. "It's graphic, it's well placed, it's imaginative. It's really a masterpiece," he said. "We think that the left arm was done by an artist of less skill, or maybe the same artist earlier in their career." The tattoos appear to have been done using a stick-and-poke technique, Riday said, which means someone used ink-dipped needles to create the images one single dot at a time. The researchers suspect that small clusters of either thorns, or iron or bronze needles, dipped in a pigment of soot and animal fat were used. It suggests, he said, the work of a true professional. "It's a very technical skill to create these kinds of tattoos, especially so long ago," Riday said. "The person doing the tattoos would need to know what they're doing and how to do it safely, and be able to create this sensational imagery that we're seeing. It takes time and skill." Anthropologist and archaeologist Andrew Gillreath-Brown, who was not involved with the study, said this use of high-resolution imaging to get a closer look at ancient tattoos is "pretty exciting" and one he hopes will open up new opportunities. Gillreath-Brown, who once identified and researched a 2,000-year-old tattooing needle from the Native American Pueblo peoples, commended the researchers for looking beyond the broader cultural significance of tattoos, as others have, and instead focusing on the artistry and technique behind them. "Being able to move outside of just even the person being tattooed themselves was really quite remarkable and will, I think, take things in a whole new direction," Gillreath-Brown, manager of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions in New Haven, Conn., told CBC. Riday, a stick-and-poke artist, himself, said he's currently working to recreate a tattoo needle in the style of the Pazyryk so he can tattoo one of the woman's pieces onto his own body and learn more about the ancient technique. He said it's been amazing to connect with the deep history of his chosen profession. "It's very richly satisfying," he said. "The chance that this individual was preserved through the ages in a burial tomb below the permafrost in Siberia, and scientists were able to find this tattoo and make it known to the world that it exists, it is really just remarkable."
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'World's most difficult jigsaw puzzle': Archaeologists piece together thousands of shattered fresco blocks from ancient Roman villa
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Archaeologists in London have painstakingly pieced together thousands of fragments of an ancient Roman fresco that has not been seen for 1,800 years. "It was like assembling the world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle," Han Li, a senior building material specialist at the Museum of London Archaeology, said in a statement. After three months of hard work, the fresco (a painting on plaster) from Roman Britain was back in its original arrangement. It reveals intricate depictions of birds, fruit, flowers and lyres, as well as ancient graffiti and a link to its artist. The shattered plaster pieces were discovered in 2021 in a large pit in the Southwark district of London during redevelopment of the site, according to the BBC. The fresco adorned 20 walls of a building constructed between A.D. 43 and 150. The excavation team blames the destruction of the villa, which happened within 157 years of its construction, for the dilapidated state of the painting. Li was nervous and excited to start the assembly process. "Many of the fragments were very delicate and pieces from different walls had been jumbled together," he said. Related: Rare fresco discovered in Pompeii shows type of woman who 'breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains' The art served to demonstrate the wealth and taste of the villa's inhabitants. The painters of the masterpiece seem to have been inspired by aesthetics far across the area of Roman influence, emulating designs from what are now Germany and France, according to the statement. Parts of the fresco display a pattern of rectangular panels, which was common for the period, but the yellow color of the pattern is rare. The Greek alphabet is etched into the plaster as ancient graffiti. Similar findings in Italy point to the alphabet as a checklist or tally, and the quality of the writing suggests the graffiti artist was an experienced writer, the statement reported. The fragments also contain a hint about the fresco's artists. The Latin word "fecit" — which means "has made this" — is identifiable and framed by a decorative carving that Romans used when signing artwork. Much to Li's chagrin, though, the plaster is broken in the spot where a signature would be, so the artists remain a mystery. RELATED STORIES —Ancient fresco of mythical Narcissus found in Pompeii —Gladiators fought in Roman Britain, action-packed cremation urn carvings reveal —Ancient Romans sacrificed birds to the goddess Isis, burnt bones in Pompeii reveal Li also found faintly drawn painter's guidelines that are visible only under certain light. Faint sketches of a flower within a circle can be recognized, but "the painters likely changed their mind and chose not to paint it," Li said in the statement. Many questions about the fresco remain unanswered, including the purpose of the Roman-era building it decorated. But it could have been a commercial property, "perhaps relating to the storage or distribution of storage jars and vessels, brought to London by ship from the wider Roman Empire," the statement reported.
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Rare stone carving depicting Assyrian king surrounded by gods unearthed
Archaeologists have unearthed a peculiar ancient stone slab in Iraq depicting an Assyrian emperor from the seventh century BC surrounded by deities worshipped in the Mesopotamian civilisation. The giant slab, measuring about 5.5m (16ft) long and 3m (10ft) wide, was discovered in the throne room of the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, located near Mosul. The ancient city is considered to be one of the most important parts of North Mesopotamia, becoming the capital of the Assyrian empire in the late eighth century BC under King Sennacherib. Researchers who were part of the latest excavation found the stone slab 'extraordinary', not only for its size, but also for the scenes it depicted. This is mainly because until now, religious relief images from the Assyrian Empire have not contained many deities. 'Among the many relief images of Assyrian palaces we know of, there are no depictions of major deities,' said Aaron Schmitt from the Institute of Prehistory, Protohistory and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. Since 2022, excavations have been underway at a core sector of the North Palace built by King Ashurbanipal. The newly uncovered slab was found to contain at its centre Ashurbanipal, the last great ruler of the Assyrian empire, flanked by two supreme deities: the gods Ashur and Ishtar, the patron goddess of Nineveh. It also contains a fish-like deity, who grants the gods and the sovereign salvation and life, as well as a supporting figure with arms raised, most likely to be restored as a scorpion-man. 'These figures suggest that a massive winged sun disk was originally mounted above the relief,' Dr Schmitt said. Over the coming months, researchers hope to study the slab in detail, find the context behind its depictions, and publish the results in a scientific journal. The slab was originally located at a site across from the main entrance to the throne room, which researchers say could be the most important place in the palace. Fragments of the slab were uncovered in an earth-filled pit behind this niche. Researchers suspect it was dug out during the Hellenistic period in the third or second century BC. 'The fact that these fragments were buried is surely one reason why the British archeologists never found them over a hundred years ago,' Dr Schmitt said.
