Laser focus on ancient tattoo on Peruvian mummy

From around 900 to 1500 AD, a culture flourished along the coast of central Peru. Known as the Chancay people, they left behind rich cultural remains, including intricate tattoos that are preserved to this day on the skin of mummified individuals.

A study published Monday describes new details of these tattoos that were previously hidden to the naked eye, such as finely traced lines. By illuminating the mummies with laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF), an imaging tool not previously applied to tattoos, the scientists found lines between 0.1 and 0.2 millimeters wide, narrower than the lines produced by modern tattoo needles. I found the line.

“We were struck by how minute the tattoo lines in the LSF images were,” said Michael Pittman, assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of the new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ” he said. Email. “We knew right away that what we were seeing was something special.”

The mummy featured in the new study was buried in the Cerro Colorado cemetery and was rediscovered in 1981. Mummy tattoos are about 1,000 years old and feature ornate geometric patterns reminiscent of scales and vines, as well as curled up, amorphous animals. Tail.

Aaron Deter-Wolf, a prehistoric archaeologist with the Tennessee Department of Archeology who specializes in ancient tattoos, said the Chankay people have long been known for their high level of craftsmanship across their material culture, and in addition to tattoos, they also have elaborate He said he left a mark. Involved in research.

Dr. Pittman, a dinosaur paleontologist, has spent more than a decade studying fossils using laser-stimulated fluorescence. This non-invasive tool shines a high-power laser onto the specimen, producing fluorescent emissions that reveal subtle features such as soft tissue. In recent years, Dr. Pittman's team has begun investigating archaeological applications of this technique.

“We look forward to LSF working on other ancient tattoos from different cultures around the world and have plans to continue this imaging work to uncover similar exciting discoveries. ,” Dr. Pittman said. “We hope to be able to trace the intricacies of ancient tattoos even further back.”

Deter-Wolf was unconvinced that the study demonstrated LSF's clear advantages over other techniques for probing ancient tattoos, such as multispectral imaging. “It’s a nice additional tool to have in our kit, but it’s not groundbreaking,” he said.

He also had concerns about some of the study's conclusions. Dr. Pittman's team suggested in their study that the tattoo patterns may have been created from punctures with thin instruments, such as cactus needles or sharp animal bones. Deterwolf believes most of the tattoos examined in the study were created by incisions rather than punctures.

“Painters use different paintbrushes to achieve different results,” Deterwolf said. “Carvers have been doing the same thing for thousands of years, so depending on the tools they're using, they end up with different physical signatures.”

Dr Pittman supported the team's conclusion that the tattoo was created by puncture. “The line of our tattoo is uniquely thin among the publicly available Chancay tattoos, suggesting that puncture tattooing is more logical.” he said in an email.

Determining the techniques used by tattoo artists is an important step in interpreting the meaning of body art to past societies. Different techniques were used across different cultures, and the process of creating body art was often imbued with ritual meaning.

For example, Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old “Iceman” with the oldest known body art on a mummy, was inked primarily for therapeutic reasons, not just aesthetics. It is possible that It's natural to wonder why the Chancais worked so hard on their work, but their motives remain a mystery.

“These are not purely artistic expressions,” Deterwolf says. “They're very culturally loaded,” he said, noting that while tattoos are just the tip of the iceberg, “there's an underlying cultural framework.”