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Inca Mummy Bundle

Wrapped tightly in cotton cloth and accompanied by pottery, food and other socially significant material (and sometime with a detachable artificial head), Inca and pre-Inca mummy bundles represent a way not only to preserve the physical remains of the dead, but also to ensure their continued social presence.  For many societies the living and the dead often have more to do with one another than we might presume from our own social norms. Continue reading →

Cheese

When archaeologists consider developments in food production, we tend to think first of the shift from hunting and gathering to the domestication of animals or cereal cultivation, both of which allow food resources to be stored and consumed when needed. Cheese production, however, is now known to date back to at least 7,500 years ago (the 6th millennium BC), suggesting that it too had an important role at this time in some societies. Continue reading →