Lectures Session I: Molecular Studies A1 The 5,300-year-old Helicobacter pylori

A34 - Were Ötzi’s bow stave and arrow shafts planned to be effective for hunting and warfare?

Manuel Lizarralde
Connecticut Collete 270 Mohegan Avenue New London Connecticut U.S.A.,

Since the discovery of Ötzi, there have been many questions and hypotheses about the quality and effectiveness of his unfinished bow stave and arrows, especially about their intended functions. Was he planning to make them for hunting or warfare and if so, how effective could they have been if completed? The goal of this presentation is to provide empirical data to test these hypotheses. The author has made seven bows and 24 arrow replicas (at lengths of 72, 84, and 86cm) to use in this experiment. These bows, 182.5cm long, have been replicated to be 25-28kg draw weight (at 72cm) and the arrow spines were crafted to match the bow draw weight. Results from 3,000 shooting rounds to measure the accuracy and kinetic force of each of the arrows with these seven bows will be presented to determine if these tools were efficient enough for hunting or warfare. As an ethnobotanist, hunter and bow maker specializing on the hunting technology of indigenous peoples in North and South America (Barí of Venezuela, Matsigenkas of Peru and Mashantucket Pequot of the United States), the author has a unique perspective to understand Ötzi’s equipment from a multitude of perspectives. This is an experimental archaeological research project to empirically prove the efficiency of Ötzi’s hunting equipment.

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A35 - Ötzi, Primus inter pares- The Iceman seen from the field of glacial archaeology

Martin Callanan
Dept. of Historical Studies, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway,

There will never be another Iceman. His was a unique discovery that stands alone in many ways; the circumstances of his recovery, his iconic role in the media and popular culture and not least, the ever-growing bank of knowledge of the past gleaned through years of careful study of his remains.However as global climates warm and alpine ice shrinks around the globe, the same miraculous tableaux, where precious remains of the past emerge from melting ice, is playing itself out time and again in several regions around the world. So frequent is this occurrence now, that a sub-discipline called glacial archaeology has recently emerged. This is an active and dynamic international field, with a range projects, conferences and publications currently ongoing.This presentation offers a retrospective from a glacial archaeological perspective that traces relevant threads and developments from the discovery of the Iceman up until the present. What can we learn by looking back at late 1992 and the time around the discovery of The Iceman, given what we now know about frozen cultural remains in alpine areas and the effect that modern climate change is currently having on glacial archaeological sites?

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A36 - Death in the Ice: Re-investigations of the Remains from the Theodul Glacier (Switzerland)

Sandra Lösch, Amelie Alterauge
Department of Physical Anthropology, Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Bern, Switzerland Sulgenauweg 40 Bern Switzerland,

Scattered human and animal bones, weapons, knives, jewellery, coins, leather fragments and fabrics were found at the Upper Theodul glacier (Switzerland) between 1984 and the early 1990s. The finds are assumed to represent a single fatal event. Until recently, the remains were interpreted as those of a mercenary. All objects and fabrics were restored and investigated by experts using macroscopic, microscopic and typological methods. The animal bones were sorted, identified and attributed to species. The human remains were investigated using standard osteological methods, computed tomography, and stable isotope analysis. The bones belong to an adult male individual who was wearing woollen and silk clothes and leather shoes. He was equipped with a rapier, a dagger and a wheel-lock pistol that were probably manufactured in Germany. Due to their type, it is unlikely that the weapons were used as military arms. The coins were mainly minted in Northern Italy and date the fatal event on the Theodul glacier to around 1600 AD. The associated finds, in particular the weapons, contest the former interpretation as a mercenary and suggest an identification as a traveller or tradesman.

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A37 - Two Remarkable Peruvian Skulls from the Collection of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim

Oliver Gauert
Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Am Steine 1-2 Hildesheim Germany,

The Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim is home to a remarkable collection of mummified remains from different cultures. These human and animal remains are currently under intensive investigation in the framework of the newly established Hildesheim Mummy Research Project, a cooperation with the St. Bernward Hospital Hildesheim, the University of Göttingen and the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums Mannheim. The collection also contains a number of Peruvian mummy heads. The soft tissue of two of them is remarkably well preserved. One of the skulls has been artificially elongated with the hair still fixed to the scalp. The other one has a trepanation,which had been carried out ante mortem and through the aperture preserved soft tissue inside the cranial cavity is still recognizable. The CT investigation scheduled for July 2016 will result in new and more detailed information regarding the degree of soft tissue preservation inside the cranial cavity. The contribution will present these new results and will also give a general overview of the Hildesheim Research Project, its origins and future prospects.

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Lectures Session VIII: Conservation and Tattoos


A38 - 25 years of conservation of the Iceman. Development of analytical methods and technological devices

Marco Samadelli¹, Eduard Egarter Vigl², Vito Fernicola³, Albert Zink¹
1 Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, Bolzano Italy

2 Scuola Superiore Sanitaria Provinciale "Claudiana", Bolzano, Italy

3 I.N.RI.M., Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Torino, Italy

Starting from the definition and motivation of the standard physical parameters for the correct Iceman conservation, this work goes on to explain the history that has led to the actual Iceman conservation system configuration.This work aims to evidence the elevated degree of precision and reliability provided by this system and to highlight the technologically advanced content within the system.Past, present and future of technological and scientific research develop the continuous compromise between the necessity to preserve the historic value and to present it to the public.This new technology is the attempt to valorize the pioneering challenge to preserve a unique mummy while at the same time bringing greater importance from the scientific and media point of view.

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A39 - Characterization of the cultivable microbial flora on the Mummy Oetzi

Ludwig Moroder¹
1 laboratorio aziendale di microbiologia e virologia via Amba Alagi , 5 Bolzano Italy,

The study aims to identify the presence of cultivable microorganisms, adapted to the cold environment on the tissues of the Iceman. The research is based on the evaluation of microbial growth in superficial and deep samples obtained by collecting defrost liquids and by the use of swabs and sponges to collect internal and external samples.The characterization of the microbial flora that colonized the frozen body over the years forms the basis for the right intervention measures to prevent microbial deterioration.The microbiological samples were taken during the thawing of the Mummy OETZI, the November 8, 2010 at the Archaeological Museum in Bolzano.The research methodology is based on the classical microbiological techniques. The primary samples collected where streaked on the surface of agar plates to facilitate the formation of visible colonies, and in parallel added to non-selective broth culture medium to improve the recovery of stressed microorganisms more difficult to grow. Culture media were chosen to allow the growth of most of the cultivable microorganisms (bacteria and fungi).Among the colonies grown on the plates, 40 colonies phenotypically different where chosen and picked for strain-identification, using sequencing of 16S region according to standard procedures and obtaining identification to genus level.Of the 43 samples analysed, 30 showed some microbial growth; 10 of them showed significant counts of colonies after direct plating, whereas the other 20 samples led to growth of single colonies ( 1-3) or just to positive broth culture.The predominant flora belongs to the genera Ralstonia and Arthrobacter end makes up more than 90% of the total colonies grown. These are strictly aerobic bacteria, typically oligotroph and usually found as a characteristic soil component.The attempt to isolate anaerobic strains, such as e.g. strains belonging to the genus Clostridium, did not give any results.

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A40 - Complete mapping of the tattoos of the 5300 year old Tyrolean Iceman

Marcello Melis¹, Marco Samadelli², Matteo Miccoli¹, Eduard Egarter Vigl³, Albert Zink²
1 Profilocolore Srl Via Spluga 22 Roma Italy,

2 Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, Bolzano, Italy

3 Scuola Superiore Sanitaria Provinciale "Claudiana", Bolzano, Italy

This study documents for the first time the complete mapping of one of the world's most ancient tattoos present on a mummified human body dating back to over 5300 years ago, belonging to the so-called Iceman mummy. For this purpose, we utilised innovative non-invasive multispectral photographic imaging techniques capable of “seeing” in a range from IR to UV. An especially developed innovative system (HMI), based on modified camera and advanced calibration algorithms, which allows to measure and process the spectral reflectance sampled on seven bands in the range of UV-VIS-NIR (near infrared) for each pixel of the acquired scene, has led us to identify and certify the presence of 61 tattoos divided into 19 groups in various parts of the body. The presence of the tattoos and their precise positioning on the mummy's body shall prove helpful in the future for the in-depth analysis of their relationship with recent scientifically acquired knowledge, to help determine the real function of tattooing in prehistoric times.

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A41 - Newly discovered tattoos support acupuncture treatment in Oetzi.

Maximilian Moser¹, Leopold Dorfer², Eduard Egarter-Vigl³, Marco Samadelli⁴, Albert Zink⁴
1 Medical University Graz Harrachgasse 21/5 Graz Austria,

2 Austrian Society for Controlled Acupuncture and TCM, Italy

3 Department of Pathological Anatomy and Histology, Italy

4 Institute for mummies and the Iceman, Italy

When the Tyrolean Iceman was discovered in Southern Tyrolia (Alto Adige) in 1991, medical science got first access to a human body preserved in ice for 5300 years. It soon became evident that several tattoos had been applied to the skin of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer. In 1998 and 1999 we could show, that these tattoos, which were obviously non-decorative due to their shape and location, had medical purpose: A close connection between points used in Chinese acupuncture and the location of the tattoos could be demonstrated. Later the use of different staining substances in decorative and therapeutic tattoos in a Peruvian mummy from the Atacama desert as well as modern anthropological research supported the idea of a medical purpose of these tattoos as well. Here we show, that newly discovered tattoos on the anterior chest of the Iceman fit well into the hypothesis of acupuncture treatment by tattooing. We found that the positions of these new tattoos correspond to Kidney 9 (T13), Liver 5 (T 14) and Liver 14 (T15) of the traditional Chinese acupuncture. Remarkably, all lines of the old as well as the new tattoos, except the two crosses described already in 1999, are parallel to the corresponding Chinese acupuncture channels and not crossing them. Our result demonstrate that acupuncture should be dated earlier than expected, at least to the times when the Iceman lived. It can be concluded further that there either had been an early contact between Asian culture and the culture of the Iceman, or the origins of acupuncture are multifocal. A last possible conclusion would be, that Acupuncture originally was invented in Europe, but after having dissipated to China, was conserved in the Chinese medical books, whereas it was forgotten in Europe.

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Lectures Session IX: The Iceman’s Voice


A42 - How do mummies and fossils speak

Francesco Avanzini¹, Rolando Füstös²
1 Phoniatrician, ENT Department, General Hospital – Bozen

2 Chief of the ENT Department, General Hospital – Bozen

Do the mummies have a speech? This is the intrigung question we payed when we saw for the first time the Ötzi´s CT& scans. Starting from the imaging of the vocal tract cavities and the abundant research in this field, it is possible to infer the acoustics of the voice from the so called area functions. We recall here the milestones of the research regarding the evolution of human voice and speech and try to shed light into the fascinating field of paleoanthropology. It will be particularly explained the main data of the scientific literature regarding the possible reconstruction of the voice, starting from the anatomical structures of hominins´ and ancestors´ vocal tract Our study represents the first attempt to reconstruct the voice of a mummified Homo sapiens sapiens with the aid of the modern technology applied on human anatomy and physiology. So we try to imagine a new field where vocology meets paleoanthropology in an attempt to found a new science: the paleo-phoniatrics

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A43 - Anatomy and physiology of the voice organs: what do we think about the Iceman´s voice

Rolando Füstös¹, Francesco Avanzini², Johannes Schnabl³
1 Chief of the ENT Department, General Hospital – Bozen

2 Phoniatrician, ENT Department, General Hospital – Bozen

3 Specialist, ENT Department, General Hospital – Bozen

Starting from the anatomical features of the structures involved in voice production, from the vocal chords to the labial output, it is possible to go back to one´s vocal characteristics with the aid of several methods.

The vocal chords are the source of the vocal sound, but the main contribution to it is given by the selective filtering accomplished by the vocal tract configuration.

This is what we tried to do on the “Iceman” Ötzi. We reviewed the corpus of paleoanthropological literature regarding the cranial bases, the hyoid bone and the cervical spine of various fossils of hominins in order to comprehend the evolution of the vocal tract anatomy and gain important pieces of information for our study.

We based our research on the CT scans of the mummy in order to build a model of synthetic material that allows us to gain with sufficient approximation the vocal tract anatomy. We are going to try a second step with the reconstruction of the plausible characteristics of the soft tissue sorrounding the vocal tract structures. This will allow us to perform the acoustic analysis for the voice reconstruction.

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A44 - How do we reconstruct the Iceman´s voice

Piero Cosi ¹, Andrea Sandi²
1 Coordinator of the “Institute of Cognitive Sciences e Technology “ – UOS of Padova (ex IFD “Institute of Phonetics and Dialectology) of the National Research Council (CNR)

2 SINTAC Biomedical Engineering, Padova

How is it possible to gain a voice from a tube? Recalling the anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract structures, the modern technology applied on vocology allows us to try to give an answer to the question.

In the field of voice synthesis it is well known that one can reconstruct the sound of a voice from the study of the so called area functions. By means of area functions calculation applied on the structure of the vocal tract, we can have a representation of a certain vocal sound. It is then possbile to resynthesize the sound on the base of the calculated vocal tract area functions acting as a filter. We have digitized the CT scans of the mummy in order to gain the profile of the vocal cavities. With the aid of the softwares….

We then calculated the area functions and so we tried to extract the formants of a synthetized sound “injected” in the reconstructed vocal tract. Our aim was to demonstrate how the research on voice acoustics can successfully interacting with the intriguing field of paleoanhropology

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Session VII: Short Poster Presentations


P1 - Pick the right pocket. Sub-sampling of bone sections to investigate diagenesis and DNA preservation.

Valeria Mattiangeli¹, Hege Ingjerd Hollund², Matthew D Teasdale¹, Oddný Ósk Sverrisdóttir³, Dan G. Bradley¹, Terry O'Connor⁴
1 Trinity College Dublin Smurfit Institute Dublin Ireland,

2 Museum of Archaeology,, Stavanger, Norway

3 University of Uppsala, Sweden

4 University of York

Many archaeological bones display a heterogeneous degradation pattern. Highlydegraded bones could contain pockets of well-preserved bone, harbouring goodquality DNA. This dichotomy may explain why the relationships between global bonepreservation parameters such as histological integrity, bone mineral crystallinity orcollagen yield, and bulk DNA preservation / amplification success rate, have beenfound to be at best, weak to moderate. In this pilot study, we explore whether or nota more localized approach will highlight a stronger relationship between diageneticparameters and DNA preservation. This study includes a detailed histologicalcharacterization of bone diagenesis in sub-areas of three bone samples. Regions ofthe same bone, which displayed differential degrees of preservation or type ofdiagenesis were sampled for further analysis and both genetic (small scale IlluminaMiSeq sequencing) and chemical (FTIR) analyses were performed. The aim was toinvestigate how bone diagenetic processes relate to DNA preservation at a higherresolution than in previous studies. This is key in order to improve DNA analyticalsuccess rates. The expected relationship between bone and DNA preservation(retrieved endogenous DNA) was observed and the results corroborate previouswork that DNA preservation is linked to the integrity of bone collagen and mineral.The results further suggest that non-biological diagenetic alterations such as etchingand the presence of mineral infiltrations and inclusions have a negative effect onDNA preservation/extraction.

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P2 - Secular change of femoral morphology from a clinical perspective: How would a modern anatomically pre-contoured fracture fixation implant fit the Neolithic Iceman in comparison to medieval and modern femora?

Beat Schmutz¹, Frederik Schütz¹, Albert Zink², Frank Rühli³
1 Institute of Health & Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

2 Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, EURAC European Academy Bolzano, Italy

3 Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zürich, Switzerland

Current treatment for internal fixation of bone fractures requires metal implants (plates and intramedullary nails) which are optimally contoured to fit the specific shape of patient’s bones. As bone morphology is influenced by factors such as nutrition and activity level, there is high clinical interest on acquiring data for the design of such implants from specific populations. However, little is known how secular changes impact on implant design.

Therefore, utilising the Iceman, and femora from the Dalheim Collection (NW Germany, dated ca. 1300AD) as example, this study aims to investigate and quantify to what extent femoral morphology might have changed over the last 5200 years in relation to implant design.

Virtual 3D models reconstructed from computed tomography data of the Iceman, from 20 femora of the Dalheim Collection and from 31 modern Caucasian (Switzerland, North America) are utilised. The 3D models of a recent proximal femoral nail design were virtually implanted into the intact bone models. Anatomical nail fit was determined from the total surface area of nail protrusion from the inner cortex surface and maximum distance of nail protrusion. The position of the distal nail tip within the medullary cavity was also quantified.

There was a considerably larger anatomical misfit (2978mm2, 3.5mm) of the nail for the Iceman compared to the medieval (n=20) bones (mean: 914mm2, 2.0mm), whereas a better fit was obtained for the modern (n=31) femora (mean: 583mm2, 1.3mm). Surprisingly, the distal nail tip was centred in the canal of the Iceman’s femur, whereas the clear majority (75%) was located anterior for the medieval bones, versus a marginal majority (55%) in the modern sample, respectively.

This, together with anatomical measurements of the specimens, suggests that secular change over the last 5200 years might have had a considerable impact on femoral morphology in relation to implant design.

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