Exam Essay # 2: Topic # 2 Mummification is a specific funerary ritual practiced by many diverse groups across the globe. It is the arresting of natural processes in a dead body to preserve or protect it from its own decay. Mummies are a curious subject, as they exist as both relics and once living humans that can be studied in a whole heaping helping of different contexts by the curious anthropologist. There are many different ways that a body can become mummified, enough to qualify at least some form of classification. The way I’ve most often seen them classified is pretty simple and easy to understand. There are Natural and Artificial forms of mummification as well as Unintentional and Intentional forms of mummification. These four types
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Some groups of peoples only mummified distinguished groups, such as the previously mentioned Peat Bog Bodies. P.B.B.s are found to hold varying context from accidental drownings to ritual sacrifice. Some Archeologists believe that Peat Bogs were a deeply spiritual place for North Western Europeans and were thus befitting of sacrifices (Ashley Winburn, Lecture, Feb. 28). Evidence found on several bodies seems to indicate pre-mortem trauma and that some of the mummies may have been criminals when alive. Criminals would have been executed and thrown into bogs as sacrifices of fertility and protection. Some bodies were even discovered with braided rope tied around their necks, the rope also having been preserved by the bog, indicating a death by hanging. Though some peoples reserved mummification for set groups within their culture, there are others who treat mummification as the only form of funerary and practice it exclusively. One such group would be the Chinchorro people of South America. These Maritime people would mummify all their dead with extreme anatomical precision. The bodies often had intact skin and musculature while the bones would either be replaced with sticks, removed entirely, or taken out and put back in with anatomically correct placement. Thanks to ethnohistoric accounts we do know that the Chinchorro mummified all the
Some groups of peoples only mummified distinguished groups, such as the previously mentioned Peat Bog Bodies. P.B.B.s are found to hold varying context from accidental drownings to ritual sacrifice. Some Archeologists believe that Peat Bogs were a deeply spiritual place for North Western Europeans and were thus befitting of sacrifices (Ashley Winburn, Lecture, Feb. 28). Evidence found on several bodies seems to indicate pre-mortem trauma and that some of the mummies may have been criminals when alive. Criminals would have been executed and thrown into bogs as sacrifices of fertility and protection. Some bodies were even discovered with braided rope tied around their necks, the rope also having been preserved by the bog, indicating a death by hanging. Though some peoples reserved mummification for set groups within their culture, there are others who treat mummification as the only form of funerary and practice it exclusively. One such group would be the Chinchorro people of South America. These Maritime people would mummify all their dead with extreme anatomical precision. The bodies often had intact skin and musculature while the bones would either be replaced with sticks, removed entirely, or taken out and put back in with anatomically correct placement. Thanks to ethnohistoric accounts we do know that the Chinchorro mummified all the