Restoring context and identity to mummified remains from South Africa : uncovering hidden information

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2009-05-25T06:26:36Z

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Pereira, Lucille Mary

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Mummified human remains are in effect cultural and biological museums, recording a wealth of information on the life and death of the individual as well as the sociocultural beliefs of those involved in the collection and curation of the specimen. During the 1930’s, the mummified remains of a single individual (TM PAL 92-136) and associated artefacts were donated to the Transvaal Museum. Detailed provenance data were not recorded. A multi-disciplinary approach is followed to restore context and identity to the remains. TM PAL 92-136 was an adult female in her early to middle twenties who stood at 1.58 m when she died. The extraction and amplification of aDNA from a rib showed her ancestry to be Khoe-San, yet she lived at a time of contact between Iron Age pastoralists and traditional hunter-gatherers ~AD 1160. The extent to which she was immersed in either way of life cannot be gleaned from the data apart from to say that she was most probably associated with a semi-sedentary agricultural lifestyle. She appears to have died of natural causes as no pathologies are evident on the body. Perhaps frailty or malnutrition made her susceptible to illness although the absence of enamel hypoplasia suggests that she was exposed to little dietary stress during her life. Perhaps the cause of death was one that does not leave visible traces on skeletal remains. The body became covered in iron-oxide rich sediment from the Waterberg Group shortly after death resulting in natural mummification of the remains. Outer extremities became exposed some time later and were broken. The extremities are no longer mummified, have stepped fractures and were exposed to fire. In the 1930’s the remains were discovered, possibly by people carrying candles in a dark environment environment 4 such as a cave or mineshaft, who spilled wax on the cranium. Dr Frederik Ludorf – a man in his thirties of German and missionary descent – donated the remains to the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. Human skeletal remains were highly sought after at the time as specimens in the study physical anthropology and presumably for display. Robert Broom accepted the remains applying a designation of ‘Koranna’ to it – despite later admitting that he’d ‘made up’ the classification. In order to fit into the display cabinet, the remains were deliberately broken and folded over at the knees. Following public disapproval about the display of human remains, the remains are now stored in the basement of the NCHM. ‘Museum beetles’ (Dermestidae sp.) have caused slight damage to the remains. The remains have been returned to the museum along with the results from this project.

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