Experimental archaeology

I am intrigued by experimental archaeology, replicating past processes in an attempt to understand them. This includes trying to move large stones like those used at Stonehenge, recreating and using the tools of the past, repeating historic journeys, and building the inventions in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. I was an avid watcher of the PBS series "The 1900 House" (1999), "Frontier House" (2002), "Manor House" (2002), "Regency House Party" (2004), "Colonial House" (2004), and "Texas Ranch House" (2006). So my interest was sparked by the last line of this article: "To further investigate the phenomenon, researchers have buried pigs' heads in and around the pre-Roman site, to simulate what may have happened."

Here's what happened:
Sometime between 673 and 482 B.C., a man in what is now York, England, was hanged and then ritually decapitated. The severed head was buried without being deliberately preserved (for instance, by embalming or smoking). When the brain was excavated in 2008, it was reduced in volume due to loss of water but intact. This Iron Age brain is thus the oldest-known best-preserved brain in Britain.

Here's how:
Burying the brain quickly in a pit full of thick, wet clay may have helped to forestall decomposition. The cool temperature of the soil may have slowed the actions of enzymes and the lack of oxygen may have reduced the actions of microbes. In addition, being buried apart from the body (which wasn't found) meant that the brain was not in contact with the digestive bacteria, which would normally cause the surrounding tissue to putrefy. But as University of York researcher Matthew Collins states, "Still, these theories don't fully explain why the brain didn't turn into mush. It's curious, because normally it is one of those organs that degrade quickly. There must be something going on internally that we don't understand."

That's where the pigs come in...

Preserved in a barrel

Here's the lowdown on those schoolyard tales of bodies preserved on board ship in alcohol that is then siphoned off by the sailors. There's a grain of truth in there somewhere!

Legend has it that the body of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) was placed in a vessel filled with honey. But mummy expert Art Aufderheide finds no plausible evidence that Alexander was preserved in honey.

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When Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) died in the Battle of Trafalgar, his body was preserved in anticipation of a state funeral, rather than being buried at sea. The surgeon on board ship had the body put in a cask filled with brandy that was lashed to the deck and placed under guard. The brandy had to be replenished a couple of times because of its absorption by the corpse, leading to the legend that the liquor had been drunk and the expression "tapping the Admiral." After they returned to England, the surgeon was roundly criticized for not using the better-known preservative - rum.

The body of John Paul Jones (1747-1792) was preserved in alcohol and placed in a lead coffin upon his death in France. He was funeralized and buried within several days. Then in 1905, he was exhumed and autopsied by French anthropologist J. Capitan, who wrote in part: The heart, small, contracted, the color of dead leaves, has its valves absolutely normal and still perfectly flexible... The body was returned to the United States. Comparison of Jones' preserved head with a bust sculpted from life is one of the first uses of photographic superimposition.