Humans have adopted body modification methods throughout history to conform to prevalent beauty standards, social status and group affiliation, and even for ritual reasons. Among such body modifications, tattooing still exists as a widely practised cultural practice. An intriguing discovery has recently shed new light on ancient South American body art. The remains of an approximately 800-year-old female mummy from the Italian Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography have uncovered unusual tattoos on her face that differ markedly from those previously documented in the Andean region. An international team of anthropologists have published these findings in the May-June issue of the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Unique and minimalist tattoo

According to the study, the tattoos stand out because of their simplicity and unusual placement. Unlike the more elaborate and extensive tattoos commonly found on the hands, wrists, forearms, and feet of ancient South American mummies, the woman’s face bears a minimalist design consisting of three distinct lines inked on her right cheek.

Apart from this, while looking closely at the mummy using infrared reflectography, a technique often used to “see through” paint layers of artwork to find older brush strokes, the research team also found one line on the left cheek and an S-shape on the right wrist. Typically, black inks in archaeological tattoos have been presumed to be made from charcoal, a material widely used historically for skin decoration.

The researchers used a suite of non-destructive techniques to identify the ink composition. Although they expected to find evidence of charcoal in the ink, they instead discovered that the unusual ink was made with magnetite, an iron oxide mineral, with traces of the mineral augite. In South America, augite and magnetite can be found together in southern Peru, suggesting a potential homeland for the mummified woman.