Research Items

Abstract

MUMMIFICATION IN AUSTRALIA AND AMERICA.—Mr. Warren K. Dawson has published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 58, Pt. 1, a study of the characteristic features of mummification as practised in Australia and America, based partly upon the published evidence, and partly upon a personal examination of such of the actual mummies or their photographs as are available—the latter a point of importance, as it has enabled the author to meet the contention, maintained by many writers, that mummification in South America is a result of natural causes, as it undoubtedly was in the early period in Egypt. In Australia the object of mummification was to secure the preservation of the body until the prolonged ceremonies after death had been completed. Hence it was necessary that the body should be portable owing to the frequent moving of the camp. The body was, therefore, preserved in a position which was often unnatural, the thighs sometimes being so far bent that the knees were forced behind the shoulders. Certain features which are meaningless in their context point to an introduced ritual. Such, for example, is the practice of mummification even when the corpse was destined for cremation or other form of destruction; the pains taken to remove the epidermis, though the whole of the body was afterwards burnt; the laying of the body on a roof-covered platform; and the painting of the body with redochre and the attempt to give it a life-like appearance by painting the shrunken eyes. In Egypt by the twenty-first dynasty an artificial eye of white stone with black inlay had superseded various experimental methods. In the Torres Straits artificial eyes resembling those of Egypt, sometimes cowrie shells, were employed. The Australians, lacking the necessary skill, sometimes packed the eyelid with cotton, indicating the pupil by a pigment.