Pictures of fictional animals on the aides of a 2300 -year -old mummified woman reveal new information about tattoo art in ancient Siberia.
Thanks to the advanced photography, archaeologists have discovered that Virtuoso artist used the unknown tattoo tool “manual designs” in multiple stages.
The new results are detailed in a study published on Thursday (July 31) in the magazine Ancient times.
Pazyryk ice Mummies It is well known for its preserved physical decorations that depict animal fighting scenes and legendary creatures, including a Griffin -like animal. Bedouin Play CullivateWhich was part of the old Scythian The world flourished in the Iron Age (the sixth century to the second BC). Pazyryk burial their dead Huge hills called kurgansWhich was cut into the Siberian falcion soil. This burial pattern, along with early embalming techniques, kept the bodies of many nobles.
But when the first Pazyryk mummies were found in the 1940s, archaeologists did not notice some of the most accurate tattoos. Infrared imaging in the early first decade of the twentieth century led to the discovery Illuminated tattoo previously On four Pazyryk mummies.
Now, the infrared digital photography allowed submillimter’s accuracy to archaeologists to look closely more than ever in the tattoo on one mummy, a 50 -year -old woman who has a tattoo on both their hands and legs.
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The new photos show that the tattoo of ancient women is made with lines with uniform thickness. Some lines were created using a multi -point tool, while others were made using one accurate tool, as the researchers indicated in the study. Reveal the visual overlap of the lines from the place where the tattoo stopped working and capturing it again.
“Many cultures around the world traditionally use packages of vegetable thorns and spine to tattoos,” a co -author of the study Aaron deterring the wolfI told the archaeologist in the archeology department of Tennessee and the old Sham Sham, Live Science in an email. “We imagine the multi -point tool as a tightly associated package of Tines, and it may be associated with the thread or Sinew.”
But no strong evidence has been found on tattoo tools yet, perhaps because the tools were made of biological decomposition material, Deter-Wolf said.
Stylistic, the right forearm tattoo of a woman – a scene to combat animal – had much larger details than the other tattoo, indicating that they were made by a more experienced and skilled tattoo. It is also possible that it takes two or more sessions, as well as arrangements for different tools, to complete the tattoo.
Little is known about Pazyryk tattoos, so it is not clear whether a woman’s forearm tattoo has been made by multiple artists with different levels of experience or by one artist over time. “If a permanent workshop has been clarified, or in this step, or perhaps even as part of the seasonal burial rituals, unfortunately a question we cannot answer yet.”
“I was a fan of this research team for a very long time,” WeldingArt historian and tattoo expert at the University of Essex in the UK, who did not participate in the study, told Live Science in an email. “In the end, these methods make tattoo indexes for individual life as well as the systems of cultural beliefs, and allow us to think about old tattoos as specific moments of creative practice,” said Ludder.
Pazyryk Mummies may not abandon all their secrets yet. Surprisingly, many tattoos were cut during the embalming process, which may mean that Pazyryk did not believe the social or spiritual meaning of the tattoo that was transferred to the afterlife, as the researchers wrote.
On the other hand, “the cutting of tattoos during embalming can be some of the ritual importance.” In the case of this mummy, the forearm tattoo was cut off, but the tattoo that was not for him. “This is something that we might be able to better investigate in the future using high -resolution images of other reserved tattoos from the area,” he said.