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Touring Johnson's Island

For the past 20 years, archaeologist Dave Bush has been investigating Johnson's Island, a Civil War POW camp on western Lake Erie where more than 10,000 Confederate officers were held between 1862 and 1865. Excavations led by Bush, director of the Center for Historic and Military Archaeology at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, have revealed a wealth of information about daily life at the camp including the foundations of the prison hospital and latrines, evidence of the diseases from which the men suffered, and the location of the prisons dead line—a 30-foot-wide fire zone near the prison wall where those who tried to escape would have been shot. ARCHAEOLOGY has followed Dave Bush's research and discoveries at Johnson's Island over the past decade in a series of special reports in the magazine and online. See www.archaeology.org/johnsonsisland for complete coverage of this important project, and visit the website of The Friends and Descendants of Johnson's Island Civil War Prison at www2.heidelberg.edu/johnsonsisland. In August 2008, ARCHAEOLOGY's managing editor Eti Bonn-Muller toured the excavations and nearby Confederate cemetery with Bush, recording some rough footage of the site. Bear with us through the chirping of the cicadas, occasional low-flying small plane, and bumps along the wooded terrain on a sweltering hot afternoon, and experience Johnson's Island just like the archaeologists do.

Meresamun's Mummy: A Virtual Unwrapping

ARCHAEOLOGYs March/April 2009 cover story, "A Mummy's Life," tells of new research on the mummified remains of an Egyptian priestess named Meresamun who lived in Thebes around 800 B.C. Meresamun is the highlight of an exhibition, The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt, on view at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum through December 6. In advance of the show, Meresamun was scanned using a state-of-the-art Philips Healthcare 256-slice Brilliance iCT scanner. (As the mummy glided into the scanner, a message automatically generated by the machine told Meresamun, "Take a deep breath. Now hold it.") Meresamun is the only mummy ever subject to such advanced technology, which allowed researchers to virtually strip away the outer layers of paint from the cartonnage (linen and plaster) coffin, and see through the linen wrappings on the body and reveal the skin and bones beneath. Among the findings, the images showed five roughly oval-shaped amulets on Meresamun's body: one covering each eyelid, one at the neck, one on the chest, and one at the back. They also revealed that her brained had been removed and that her throat had been stuffed with dense wads of packing material. Meresamun had no cavities, but the top layer of her tooth enamel had been worn down by the grit in Egyptian bread, which was made from stone-ground flour.

Fighting with Jaguars, Bleeding for Rain

Associate editor Zach Zorich comments on his experience watching and filming ritual boxing in Mexico:

In early May I went to the Guerrero highlands to see the celebrations during the Catholic Holy week, which coincides with the start of the spring planting season. The people here practice a type of Catholicism that incorporates ancient rituals, the most spectacular of which are the Tigre fights. Men in the village of Acatlan dress in jaguar costumes and box each other as a kind of sacrifice to the rain god, Tlaloc. (The goggle-like eyes on their headgear match ancient depictions of both Tlaloc and his Maya counterpart Chaak.) A similar ritual takes place in the town of Zitlala, where men from rival barrios fight each other with rope clubs. The hope is that Tlaloc will be pleased by the rituals and provide rain for their crops. Some archaeologists believe that such rituals date back 3,000 years to the earliest days of the Olmec civilization and were also practiced by the Maya, Zapotecs, and Aztecs. In both Acatlan and Zitlala, filming the ritual fighting was challenging. I had to hold the camera above the heads of other spectators in the dense and milling crowd. In addition to all of the jostling and pushing, fights erupted unexpectedly throughout the mass of people. So while the videos are on the rough side, they are a fair representation of the experience.

Voyage to Crete

This summer ARCHAEOLOGY's managing editor Eti Bonn-Muller traveled throughout Crete, touring ancient palaces and towns, and speaking with archaeologists excavating at some of the most fascinating sites on the island ("Voyage to Crete," [http://www.archaeology.org/onsite/crete] July/August 2009). One evening, she enjoyed a performance by the Labrys Dance Group from the Cretan Association of New York, under the direction of Nikos Zoulakis. Chania's picturesque Firkas Fortress, built in 1629, provided the romantic backdrop along the city's Venetian harbor. In this video, the group dances the Pentozalis, which is believed to have ancient origins.

The Rock Art of Arnhem Land

In a remote corner of Arnhem Land in central northern Australia, the Aborigines left paintings chronicling 15,000 years of their history. One site in particular, Djulirri, the subject of "Reading the Rocks" in the January/February 2011 issue of ARCHAEOLOGY, contains thousands of individual paintings in 20 discernable layers. In this video series, Paul S. C. Taçon, an archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, and rock art expert from Griffith University in Queensland, takes ARCHAEOLOGY on a tour of some of the most interesting and unusual paintings—depicting everything from cruise ships to dugong hunts to arrogant Europeans—from Djulirri's encyclopedic central panel.