this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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Scent of the afterlife? Scientists re-create recipe for Egyptian mummification balm (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/archaeology@mander.xyz
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As someone that's worked in museum collections, I'd describe the mummy smell as perfume and "absolute ass."

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Now scientists have identified the compounds in the balms used to mummify the organs of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggesting that the recipes were unusually complex and used ingredients not native to the region.

“'The scent of eternity’ represents more than just the aroma of the mummification process,” said Huber, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.

As previously reported, Egyptian embalming is thought to have started in the Predynastic Period or even earlier, when people noticed that the arid heat of the sand tended to dry and preserve bodies buried in the desert.

When people began to bury the dead in rock tombs, away from the desiccating sand, they used chemicals like natron salt and plant-based resins for embalming.

In addition to a text called The Ritual of Embalming, Greek historian Herodotus, in his Histories, mentions the use of natron to dehydrate the body.

Science can help fill in the gaps, particularly given the expanding array of methods for conducting biomolecular analysis, including various forms of gas chromatography.

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