Mummy found in Italian Church?

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/mummy-discovery-italian-church-110628.htm


According to Donato Labate and colleagues from the Archaeological Superintendency of Emilia Romangna, they found about 100 mummies, that could have been an entire community who lived in the area from the mid-16th to the 18th centuries. Church of Roccapelago is in a remote mountain village in north-central Italy and about one-third of the mass grave, turned out to be mummies.

The mummies look as if they are praying, since most of them had their hands clasped together. The bodies were dressed with tunics, thick socks and caps. The mummies themselves had intact skin, tendons and hair. The clothes seem to reveal a simple lifestyle when checked with Lolanda Silvestri and Marta Cuoghi Costantini, ancient textile experts of the Institute for Cultural and Artistic Heritage of Emilia-Romagna. "Forget silk or elaborate embroidery, these people were dressed for the mountains," the researchers said. Clothes were made from wool, linen, and cotton of different thickness and often featured simple laces with geometrical patterns at the wrists and neck.

Bodies were accompanied by personal items such as rings, necklaces, religious medallions and crucifixes in various materials - gold, silver, wood, stone and grass. Also found were mummified mice, which died because of the toxic miasma generated by the mass burial.

They also found a letter that seems to be an agreement between God and the deceased.

Two openings in church's wall ensured a constant airing within the crypt and helped the process of natural mummification. Researchers believe that the crypt was a traiditional grave, with bodies buried in the ground but later period, dead people were dropped from a trap door in the floor of the church above, which helps the idea of the unusual postures the bodies were found in. It seems like the odd positions are from dropping with the trap door above.


It is quite interesting to find how even recently the bodies are accidentally mummified. It give us a great outlook into the past without only searching in a textbook of how they could have dressed. Most of the clothing we know of in that area were people in a wealthy family, and the fancy jeweleries, but the mummies show the modern civilians and how they were presented and the DNA analysts can find the diet of these past humans.