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West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 25 December 2004 |
December 21, 2004
BY JIM RITTER Science Reporter
The Field Museum's vast collection of mummies, fossils, pottery and other anthropological gems is riddled with mysteries:
* Those animal mummies from Egypt -- are they the real things, or just clever fakes?
* What makes the clay vessels from ancient Peru whistle when you pour out their contents?
**And how old was the "Magdalenian Girl" when she died in southwestern France 15,000 years ago, leaving behind a remarkably preserved skeleton?
Researchers are hoping to shed light on these and other mysteries with the help of a $225,000 portable X-ray machine that Mikron Digital Imaging is loaning to the museum for three days.
Designed for hospitals
The machine is designed to be used in hospitals to diagnose broken bones and other conditions. But digital X-rays also are a great way to peek inside a specimen without damaging it.
Of the 1.5 million objects in the Field's anthropology collection, researchers selected 40 specimens to X-ray. "We picked only the best of the best," said anthropology collections manager William Pestle.
The Mag Girl, for example, is believed to be the oldest human skeleton housed in any U.S. museum. The X-ray images might resolve a long-running dispute over her age at death.
One of Mag Girl's wisdom teeth is just beginning to emerge, which indicates she's 18 to 20 years old. But the wear and tear on her vertebrae signals she's 10 or 20 years older than that. X-ray images might help resolve the debate, as well as confirm that Mag Girl really was a female.
Researchers also hope to determine whether Mag Girl suffered certain diseases or health conditions that would leave telltale evidence in the bones. But they probably won't be able to determine how she died. (An earlier theory that Mag Girl was speared by a jealous lover has been dismissed as fanciful.)
Researchers also are X-raying the mummies of two gazelles, two falcons and one cat. Or at least they look like animal mummies. Mummy makers in ancient Egypt sometimes sold fakes. The X-rays will determine whether there's a real animal under the wrappings, or just twigs and other debris.
Another mystery involves the "whistling vessels" from northern Peru dating to 500 A.D. Potters formed the vessels in such a way that they made whistling sounds when emptied. Anthropologists speculate that shamans used the vessels in rituals.
A look inside
"To know how the whistle works, we need to know what the whistle looks like from the inside of the vessel," said Latin American collections manager Chris Philipp.
Field owns more than 80 whistling vessels. One such vessel researchers will X-ray is in the shape of a monkey, which whistles from its throat. The whistling monkey vessel will go on public display in 2006.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-mummy21.html |
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