Material specificity and cultural agency: the mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the mummies in the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily as material objects that become agents of cultural meaning on regional and universal levels through processes of human praxis. Informed by three theoretical notions: materiality, spatiality and Daniel Miller’s understanding of consumption, the analysis focuses on two ongoing events: the commoditization of the Catacombs as a tourist site and the scientific investigation of the mummies and their environment by teams of experts from the Sicily Mummy Project. These events are identified as processes of consumption, that is, praxes through which engagement with a material object confers it with the agency to generate cultural meaning. In general, the scientific investigation of the mummies as repositories of medical data has enabled their universal cultural agency as ‘biological archives’. By contrast, arguably, the unique historical materiality of child mummy, Rosalia Lombardo, has enabled her agency as a metonym for contemporary, regional Sicilian identity.