News broke yesterday about a new mass spectrometry inspection of the clothing belonging to Oetzi. You'll recall, no doubt that Oetzi, also known as the Iceman or Simalaun Man, was discovered in the Alps near the Italian/Swiss border in 1991, and discovered to be a Bronze Age man.
Lots of little snippets of news have come out over the years, summarized in the Iceman's glossary entry. The latest bit reports on the use of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometery to identify of the kinds of animals used to make up his clothing (sheep and cattle), which supports the argument that the poor old fellow came from a herding village.
Latest News
- Oetzi the Iceman, the glossary entry here at About.com
- Oetzi the Iceman dressed like a herdsman, Eureka Alert 20 August 2008
- Mummified Iceman's Ancient Job Determined, LiveScience
- Cracking Ice Age dress code a shot-in-the-arm for fashionistas, SAWF News
- Oetzi The Neolithic Iceman Had Some Pretty Good Clothing
- MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry Of Ötzi/Oetzi The Iceman’s Clothing, Kambiz on Anthropology.net
Need a giggle? Read what T.R. Talbott submitted as an entry to the Bulwer-Lytton contest in 1997: Death of an Iceman
Added:: the article referred to in the above reports is Hollemeyer, Klaus et al. 2008. Species identification of Oetzi's clothing with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry based on peptide pattern similarities of hair digests. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 22(18):2751-2767. That will take you to the abstract, although you'll have to pay to read it.
Comments
I have been fascinated by The Iceman since he was first discovered. The different methods used to study him, such as this one, have really brought him to life.
I was especially enthralled by the analysis of his stomach contents by Dr. Klaus Oeggi,(Fowler, Brenda. The Iceman’s Last Meal. NOVA.)
and the amount of information he was able to tease out of a minute amount of material! Einkorn wheat, not native to Europe, pollen from a tree that blooms March through June, and eggs from the human whipworm, ugh!
From that data they knew he was from a community that farmed, and that he didn’t die in late summer as they had thought. He also might have been pretty ill from the worms.
And they aren’t done yet!
I did get a kick out of Talbot’s little story. Don’t mess w/ an armed female!
Archaeorama sends along this link to an article about Otzi in Discovery: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/22/oetzi-iceman.html
and a video clip about what it’s like taking care of a mummy: http://blogs.discovery.com/news_archaeorama/2008/08/tzi-the-iceman.html
omg he’s like a car…did they polish him or something??