About Me

I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    Brazil: police puzzle over 7 gift-wrapped skulls

    RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Police in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo are baffled by a macabre puzzle: someone has been leaving gift-wrapped human skulls around town.

    Investigator Paul Henry Bozon Verduraz described the case to the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper in a story published Thursday.

    The first skull in cherry-red wrapping was found on February 20 in a planter near a residential building downtown. Since then, seven others have been found near Mormon temples or consulates, including those for Russia, the Czech Republic and South Africa. The skulls are old, with traces of dirt.

    Verduraz says security cameras captured images of a woman in an ankle-length skirt leaving the skulls, which seem old, with traces of dirt. He thinks this may be part of some sort of ritual.

    The 150 Mexican skulls that reveal the largest mass sacrifice in the region’s bloody history What could be the site of the largest mass human sacrifice in the bloody history of Mexico’s ancient civilisations has been discovered. Archaeologists working at the site near to Mexico City have so far unearthed 150 skulls with just one or two vertaebrae attached - suggesting they were hacked off the victims. Dated to between 600 and 850AD, the skulls were found in an area miles from the nearest large city of the day, and researchers say the discovery could challenge existing notions about the area’s ancient culture. ‘It’s absolutely remarkable to think about this little nothing on the landscape having potentially evidence of the largest mass human sacrifice in ancient Meso-America,’ said Christopher Morehart of Georgia State University. Read more here.

    The 150 Mexican skulls that reveal the largest mass sacrifice in the region’s bloody history

    What could be the site of the largest mass human sacrifice in the bloody history of Mexico’s ancient civilisations has been discovered.

    Archaeologists working at the site near to Mexico City have so far unearthed 150 skulls with just one or two vertaebrae attached - suggesting they were hacked off the victims.

    Dated to between 600 and 850AD, the skulls were found in an area miles from the nearest large city of the day, and researchers say the discovery could challenge existing notions about the area’s ancient culture.

    ‘It’s absolutely remarkable to think about this little nothing on the landscape having potentially evidence of the largest mass human sacrifice in ancient Meso-America,’ said Christopher Morehart of Georgia State University.

    Read more here.

    Mass Human Sacrifice? Pile of Ancient Skulls Found

    archaeologicalnews:

    Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of skulls in Mexico that may have once belonged to human sacrifice victims. The skulls, which date between A.D. 600 and 850, may also shatter existing notions about the ancient culture of the area.

    The find, described in the January issue of the journal Latin…

    Day of the Dead: From Mexico City to London Town The Day of the Dead celebrates the lives of loved ones who have died while also reminding people about their own mortality. The festival, which is known as “Dia de Muertos” in Spanish, is traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2 in Mexico. Seen as a fusion of Catholic and indigenous cultures, the festival is characterised by altars, visits to graves and celebrations with traditional food and music. But the festival is no longer only found in Mexico, with festivals cropping up in cities around Britain. Read more here!

    Day of the Dead: From Mexico City to London Town

    The Day of the Dead celebrates the lives of loved ones who have died while also reminding people about their own mortality.

    The festival, which is known as “Dia de Muertos” in Spanish, is traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2 in Mexico.

    Seen as a fusion of Catholic and indigenous cultures, the festival is characterised by altars, visits to graves and celebrations with traditional food and music.

    But the festival is no longer only found in Mexico, with festivals cropping up in cities around Britain.

    Read more here!

    Curious History:  Hallstatt Charnel House or House of Painted Skulls

    Behind the Hallstatt Catholic Church in Austria, near the 12th-century St. Michael’s Chapel, in a small and lovingly cared for cemetery is the Hallstatt Beinhaus (bone house), also known as the Charnel House. A small building, it is tightly stacked with over 1200 skulls. Because Hallstatt finds itself in such a lovely location, it also finds itself in very short supply of burial grounds.

    In the 1700s, the Church began digging up corpses to make way for the newly dead. The bodies which had been buried for only 10 to 15 years were then stacked inside the charnel house. Once the skeletons were exhumed and properly bleached in the sun, the family members would stack the bones next to their nearest kin.

    In 1720, a tradition began of painting the skulls with symbolic decorations as well as dates of birth and death so that the dead would be remembered, even if they no longer had a grave. Of the 1,200 skulls, some 610 of them were lovingly painted, with an assortment of symbols, laurels for valor, roses for love, and so on. The ones from the 1700s are painted with thick dark garlands, while the newer ones from the 1800s on, bear brighter floral styles.

    [ via odditiesoflife ]

    (via your-bizarre)

    Stone Age skull-smashers spark a cultural mystery

    AN UNUSUAL cluster of Stone Age skulls with smashed-in faces has been found carefully separated from the rest of their skeletons. They appear to have been dug up several years after being buried with their bodies, separated, then reburied.

    Collections of detached skulls have been dug up at many Stone Age sites in Europe and the Near East - but the face-smashing is a new twist that adds further mystery to how these societies related to their dead.

    Juan José Ibañez at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelonasays the find may suggest that Stone Age cultures believed dead young men were a threat to the world of the living.

    No one knows why Neolithic societies buried clusters of skulls - often near or underneath settlements. Some think it was a sign of ancestral veneration. “When people started living together [during the Neolithic period], they needed a social cement,” says Ibañez. Venerating ancestors might have been a way of doing this. But the violence demonstrated towards the skulls in the latest cluster suggests a different story.

    Full story here.

    collective-history: Trepanated skull, Iron age. The perimeter of the hole in the skull is rounded off by ingrowth of new bony tissue, indicating that the patient survived the operation. Evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onward. Cave paintings indicate that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders. The bone that was trepanned was kept by the prehistoric people and may have been worn as a charm to keep evil spirits away. Evidence also suggests that trepanation was primitive emergency surgery after head wounds to remove shattered bits of bone from a fractured skull and clean out the blood that often pools under the skull after a blow to the head. Such injuries were typical for primitive weaponry such as slings and war clubs. Trepanation is perhaps the oldest surgical procedure for which there is archaeological evidence, and in some areas may have been quite widespread. Out of 120 prehistoric skulls found at one burial site in France dated to 6500 BC, 40 had trepanation holes. Many prehistoric and premodern patients had signs of their skull structure healing, suggesting that many of those subjected to the surgery survived.

    collective-history:

    Trepanated skull, Iron age. The perimeter of the hole in the skull is rounded off by ingrowth of new bony tissue, indicating that the patient survived the operation.

    Evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onward. Cave paintings indicate that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders. The bone that was trepanned was kept by the prehistoric people and may have been worn as a charm to keep evil spirits away. Evidence also suggests that trepanation was primitive emergency surgery after head wounds to remove shattered bits of bone from a fractured skull and clean out the blood that often pools under the skull after a blow to the head. Such injuries were typical for primitive weaponry such as slings and war clubs.

    Trepanation is perhaps the oldest surgical procedure for which there is archaeological evidence, and in some areas may have been quite widespread. Out of 120 prehistoric skulls found at one burial site in France dated to 6500 BC, 40 had trepanation holes. Many prehistoric and premodern patients had signs of their skull structure healing, suggesting that many of those subjected to the surgery survived.

    (via alphacaeli)

    dead-men-talking:

    victusinveritas:

    wednesdaysnecropolis:

    muscavomitoria:

    The Catacombs of Paris

    Paris has a deeper and stranger connection to its underground than almost any city, and that underground is one of the richest. The arteries and intestines of Paris, the hundreds of miles of tunnels that make up some of the oldest and densest subway and sewer networks in the world, are just the start of it. Under Paris there are spaces of all kinds: canals and reservoirs, crypts and bank vaults, wine cellars transformed into nightclubs and galleries. Most surprising of all are the carrières—the old stone quarries that fan out in a deep and intricate web under many neighborhoods, mostly in the southern part of the metropolis.

    These sections of caverns and tunnels have been transformed into underground ossuaries, holding the remains of about 6 million people. Opened in the late 18th century, the underground cemetery became a tourist attraction on a small scale from the early 19th century, and has been open to the public on a regular basis from 1874.

    The official name for these subterranean veins is l’Ossuaire Municipal. Although the cemetery portion covers only a small section of underground tunnels comprising “les carrières de Paris”, Parisians today often refer to the entire tunnel network as “The Catacombs.”

    One of these days…I wouldn’t mind visiting…

    Oh, how I wish to visit the Empire of Death!

    (Source: cmfcknw)

    Be among the first to choose one of the 139 Hyrtl Skulls to “adopt.” Save a 150+ year old skull & have your name in the Mütter Museum!

    You can help conserve and preserve a skull by becoming a sponsor for an annual subscription fee of $200. Your contribution will help offset initial costs associated with the cleaning, repair, and remounting of your chosen skull. Additionally, your subscription will be acknowledged as part of the skull mount in the permanent Hyrtl Skull Exhibit in the Mütter Museum. The subscription period for this initiative will begin July 1, 2012 and end December 31, 2013.

    http://www.collegeofphysicians.org/saveourskulls/

    At well over £100, this skull-adopting lark certainly isn’t cheap, but that said, I am sorely tempted! I guess perusing a catalogue of skulls up for sponsorship is a tad bizarre - my boyfriend certainly thought so. I think he was freaked out by the names and biographical details that were recorded - I found myself engrossed in the stories such nuggets of information suggested, but it made him feel just downright uncomfortable. 

    Anyway, my ’favourites’ include Julius Farkas, aged 28 and a soldier from Hungary who shot himself in the heart due to “weariness of life” (know the feeling!) and Girolamo Zini, aged 20 and from Italy, who was a rope-walker and, perhaps unsurprisingly, died of a broken neck.

    I absolutely love the part at the end of the video in which the curator tries to sell the idea as being perfect for that hard-to-buy-for special someone! Speaking of which, it’s my birthday soon… ;o)

    (Source: youtube.com)

    ellamorte: Attendants from the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College Of Surgeons packing up some of the 3000 human skulls stored in a shed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, before their transfer to the Natural History Museum, 1st July 1948. I love this photograph - you’d never get away with treating human remains like this now!

    ellamorte:

    Attendants from the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College Of Surgeons packing up some of the 3000 human skulls stored in a shed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, before their transfer to the Natural History Museum, 1st July 1948.

    I love this photograph - you’d never get away with treating human remains like this now!

    (Source: ryanmatthewcohn)

    How has the human skull evolved?

    Genetically determined morphological integration directs the evolution of skull shape in humans. The study is based on the analysis of 390 skulls, decorated according to local tradition, from the ossuary in Hallstatt, Austria which houses an exceptionally valuable collection for anthropological research.

    The more than 700 items of skeletal remains are famous for their painted decoration, depicting flowers, leaves and crosses, with the name of the deceased printed on the forehead of most of the skulls. By cross-referencing with local registers of births, deaths and marriages, experts have been able to use the collection to reconstruct the genealogical relationships of the population from as far back as the 17th century and make informed estimates of the influence of genes on skull shape.

    Fascinating stuff! Click the link to read more…

    All over Europe, ossuaries hold the skeletal remains of the long dead, but only in Naples are they expected to produce winning lottery numbers. The thousands of anonymous plague and cholera dead that fill the Fontenelle Caves outside of Naples were not always renowned for their predictive powers; primarily they were known for being cursed and the caves a haunted place to be avoided. But a 19th century restoration project brought the living into close quarters with the dead and created a kind of charming, if macabre, ‘cult of the dead’. The trapped souls of the long dead were consulted and conversed with, the skulls cleaned and named, wishes, prayers and eventually, requests for winning lotto numbers placed on rolls of paper lovingly inserted into the empty eye sockets. The success rate of the lotto-number predicting skulls is unknown, but if you would like to try your luck, the Fontenelle ossuary caves are now open by reservation. Thanking you kindly Atlas Obscura, I am booking a flight to Naples STAT!

    All over Europe, ossuaries hold the skeletal remains of the long dead, but only in Naples are they expected to produce winning lottery numbers.

    The thousands of anonymous plague and cholera dead that fill the Fontenelle Caves outside of Naples were not always renowned for their predictive powers; primarily they were known for being cursed and the caves a haunted place to be avoided. But a 19th century restoration project brought the living into close quarters with the dead and created a kind of charming, if macabre, ‘cult of the dead’. The trapped souls of the long dead were consulted and conversed with, the skulls cleaned and named, wishes, prayers and eventually, requests for winning lotto numbers placed on rolls of paper lovingly inserted into the empty eye sockets.

    The success rate of the lotto-number predicting skulls is unknown, but if you would like to try your luck, the Fontenelle ossuary caves are now open by reservation.

    Thanking you kindly Atlas Obscura, I am booking a flight to Naples STAT!