Images of fantastic animals on the forearms of mummy women two, 300 years ago reveal new information about the art of ancient Siberian tattoos.
Thanks to cutting-edge photography, archaeologists have discovered that Virtuoso artists “hand-work” their designs in multiple stages using previously unknown tattoo tools.
The new findings are explained in detail in a study published on Thursday (July 31) in the Ancient Journal.
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Pazyryk Ice Mummies is well known for its preserved body decorations depicting animal battle scenes, including griffin-like animals, and mythical creatures. The nomadic Pasilic culture, which was part of the ancient Scythian world, flourished during the Iron Age (6th to 2nd centuries BC). Pajirik buried the dead in a huge mound called Kurgans cut into Siberian permafrost. This burial style preserved several noble bodies, along with early preservative techniques.
However, when the first Pazyryk mummies were discovered in the 1940s, archaeologists were unaware of some of the more subtle tattoos. Infrared imaging in the early 2000s led to the discovery of previously invisible tattoos in four Pazyryk mummies.
Now, with a sub-millimeter resolution, near-infrared digital photography, archaeologists can see more than ever before the tattoo of one mummy, a 50-year-old woman with tattoos on both hands and forearms.
Related: A spectacular reconstruction reveals warriors and his weapons from a 4,000-year-old burial in Siberia
The new photo shows that ancient women’s tattoos were made with uniform thickness lines. Some lines were created using multipoint tools, while others were created using finer single point tools, researchers noted in the study. The visible overlap of the lines revealed where the tactile person was no longer functioning and was picked up again.
“Many cultures around the world have traditionally used plants and bundles of thorns and thorns for tattoos,” Aaron Deter-Wolf, an archaeologist specializing in Tennessee archaeology and ancient tattoos, told Live Science in an email. “I assume that a multipoint tool is a dense bundle of tines that is probably tied to threads or signs.”
However, no solid evidence of tattoo tools has yet to be found, probably because the tools were made of biodegradable materials, Deter-Wolf said.
Stylized, the tattoo on the right forearm of a woman (animal battle scene) is much more detailed than other tattoos, suggesting that it was made by a more experienced and skilled tattooist. They are also likely to have two or more sessions and a variety of tools arranged to complete the tattoo, the researchers wrote.
Little is known about Pazyryk Tattooists, so it is unclear whether a female forearm tattoo was made by multiple artists with different levels of expertise or by one artist. “A question that unfortunately remains to be answered whether the tattoo was held in a permanent workshop, on the move, or even as part of a seasonal burial ceremony,” Deter-Wolf said.
“I’ve been a fan of this research team’s work for a very long time,” Matt Rodder, an art historian and tattoo expert at the University of Essex in the UK, told Live Science in an email because he wasn’t involved in the research. “Ultimately, these methods result in tattoo indexes for individual lives and cultural belief systems,” Rodder said.
Pazyryk Mummies may not have given up on all the secrets yet. Surprisingly, many of the tattoos were cut out during the preservative process. This could mean that Pasilic didn’t believe in the social or spiritual meaning of tattoos that were transferred to the afterlife, the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, “It is possible that getting tattoos while preservatives had a ritual importance,” Deter-Wolf said. In this mummy, the tattoo on her forearm had been amputated, but the tattoo on her hands had not been cut. “This is something we may be able to better investigate in the future using high-resolution images of other preserved tattoos from the area,” he said.
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