MSFS Day 11: The Ins and Outs of Palermo's Cultural Heritage

Notes from the Field School: August 2nd, 2016

Pineapple juice, cappucino, and
chocolate croissants for Elisa's last day.

We awoke early in the morning to grab breakfast before we walked down to the bus for our journey to Palermo. Many of us went to the Poker Bar to say farewell to our visiting researcher from Brazil, Elisa Pucu. Elisa had to leave the MSFS a bit early to prepare to attend the 9th World Congress on Mummy Studies in Lima, Peru. She will be giving a presentation at the conference and will be talking at a special session dedicated to the memory of her father, Adauto Araujo, who was an important researcher in the area of mummy studies as well as other aspects of paleoparasitology. We already miss Elisa and the parasitological/epidemiological perspectives that she brought to the class to enrich our discussions.

After a long bus ride to Palermo, we reached the Capuchin Church where we would be seeing mummies later in the day. First, we ate the packed lunch provided by Carmelina and Padre Paolo in a relatively cool and shaded area on the steps outside of the church. These individual servings of baked pasta were delicious, containing penne, vegetables, a tomato-based sauce, and melted cheese. With our stomachs full and our bladders empty, we walked to the cemetery where people were buried after mummification and the use of the catacombs was outlawed in the city.

The cemetery was filled with marble slabs, mausoleums, and other memorial structures for the dead. Photographs and flowers were scattered about the graves as we walked through looking at these monuments. Among the graves were rows of cypress trees, which not only provided shade and an aesthetically pleasing landscape, but were also symbolically important representations of eternal life because they are evergreens. Among the many important and loved individuals whose remains are found in this cemetery were two people who were particularly special. The first was Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who wrote one of the most important pieces of Sicilian literature, The Leopard. The other was S.E. Pietro Scaglione, who was murdered near his place of eventual interment as he came to visit his late wife's grave in 1971. He was a judge who had become well-known for working to stop the activities of the mafia. He was a hero for the city of Palermo for this work and he continues to live in the hearts and minds of the people for his efforts to stop the violence and corruption within the community.

Dario tells students about the cemetery behind the church.

 Cypress trees have a special religious significance at the cemetery behind the church.

Views of the graves at the cemetery behind the church.

Site of Scaglione's remains within the cemetery.

Next, we embarked on a journey through the city to see the cathedral containing the remains of Palermo's patron saint, St. Rosalia. The church was enormous and was adorned with lavish paintings, carvings of angels and other religious icons, and alcoves containing relics. The most impressive part of the church was of course the silver altar dedicated to St. Rosalia that encases her bones. As you, faithful readers, may recall from a previous blogpost about this saint, Rosalia's ghost appeared to a man during a plague epidemic in 1624. She told the man to go gather her bones from the cave where she lived and died on Mount Pellegrino and to carry them through Palermo in a procession. The man did as she asked and the epidemic came to an end. In honor of this miracle, the city venerated Rosalia and made her their patron saint.

The sanctuary of the cathedral containing the remains of St. Rosalia.

    

 The altar of St. Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo.

We took a quick break for drinks and gelato after leaving the church before we walked back to the Capuchin Church to finally see the catacombs. We were immediately struck by how large the catacombs were and by how many people were interred beneath the church. Out of respect for the mummies, we only took one photo of the class as they first entered the area and did not take any closeup pictures of the individuals themselves. Photos of some of the things that we saw can be found on the Facebook page for the catacombs, which is here.

Students enter the catacombs of the Capuchin Church to look at mummies.

Dario, who is the curator of these mummies, led us through the different corridors talking to us about the history, curation, and culture of the individuals. There was a corridor filled with friars, another with priests, another with professionals (men) of the community, and another for women. There was also an alcove specifically for children, though a few other children were scattered in other areas of the catacombs as well. Students were able to look at differential preservation as they viewed mummy after mummy dressed in various kinds of clothing, displayed in niches, in coffins, or on shelves, and each demonstrating different amounts of soft tissue preservation. Some mummies were almost totally skeletonized, while others maintained enough tissue to make out facial features. Some even had hair on their heads and/or faces, giving them a more life-like appearance than others.

The body of Rosalia Lombardo
(taken with permission of the curator).

At the end of one corridor, in a special nitrogen chamber was a tiny wooden coffin adorned with metal decorations of lions' heads and elevated on metal shaped like the paws of lions. This coffin contained the most life-like mummy within the catacombs, and in fact the most well-preserved mummy in the world. Beneath the layers of glass and bactericidal gas chamber was the body of little Rosalia Lombardo. This beautifully preserved child mummy was prepared by the famous embalmer, Alfredo Salafia after the little girl died at the age of 2 as a result of a type of pneumonia. Many years later, researchers, including our very own Dario Piombino-Mascali, used modern technology to see that her internal organs were intact and were able to determine what techniques Salafia used to create such a perfectly preserved person. Her haunting beauty was beyond description. She seemed to be sleeping or to have only died recently rather than being a person who lived and died long before my parents were born.

Sanctuary of the Capuchin Church
above the catacombs.

After the guided tour, students were asked to each chose one mummy on which to do a visual examination. The students scattered around to pick an individual and began taking notes on pathologies, taphonomic issues, and any demographic data that they could gather visually. In a few days, the students will describe their observations to the class in formal presentations tying in all that they have learned during their short time in Sicily and how the MSFS has affected their professional and personal development. Some students even went so far as the sketch the mummies because photographs were not allowed.

Once we all emerged from the catacombs, notes in hand and new information in mind, we took a look at one final church sanctuary...the Capuchin Church above where we had spent the last few hours examining mummies. The church was as ornate and beautiful as many of the others we've seen over the past week and a half. It featured breathtaking architecture, frescoes, and statues along with relics arranged in a large, elaborately carved wooden display case.

 Art and relics in the Capuchin Church.

As we rode back to Santa Lucia, some of us slept while others reflected on all that we had seen during our time in Palermo. When we arrived at the convent, dinner was already waiting for us in the dining room. Boiled eggs, peppers with spices and breadcrumbs, pinwheels with ham, spinach, and cream cheese, and a pasta with a little bit of everything sat patiently on the table as we filed in for a well-earned supper. Afterward, most of us walked down to the square to see the folklore festival already underway. The streets were lit in bright colors of celebration and people were on stage dancing to Sicilian music in traditional dress. We enjoyed the festivities with our coffees and granitas before walking back up to the convent so that we could get some sleep before the events of the coming day.

  Yummy dinner after our trip to Palermo.

View of the square from the convent.

Children sing and dance in traditional dress at the folklore festival.

Adult dancers also performed traditional dances for the festival.

View of the castle from the square framed by festive lights.

Written by  Dr. Johnica J. Morrow (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

MSFS Day 10: Finishing the Face, Perspectives of Piraino, and Our Journey to Milazzo

Notes from the Field School: August 1st, 2016

Students arrived early to class so that they could continue to work on the facial reconstruction from yesterday. The morning's work focused on the addition of a nose, ears, and general smoothing of the clay. A bit of texturing was also added for the final touches.

Deb helps Mallory with the nose.

Jordan adds ears with Deb's help.

Mari and Elisa smooth out the clay face before the big reveal.

When the facial reconstruction was complete, Deb revealed photos of how the man whose skull served as the model for the plastic skull that we used looked in life. The students felt a collective sense of achievement in seeing how similar the facial features they reconstructed together were with the features of the individual in life. They were rightfully proud of their work on their first facial reconstruction.

Deb shows the students what the individual actually looked like in life.

A closeup of the reconstructed face and in-life photos of the individual whose skull was used for the class's work.

A proud class and their first facial reconstruction together.

Phases of facial reconstruction.

The class discusses their trip to Piraino and Dario describes
the intersection of Sicilian culture and religion.

Afterward, Karl led a discussion with the students about their perspectives on the trip to Piraino a few days ago. Together, we discussed the significance of the mummies and artifacts seen on our field trip. Students shared both their feelings about their experiences in Piraino and their observations from professional perspectives. They discussed the intersection of culture and scientific investigations of archaeological materials. This brought back our discussions of ethics and stakeholders from the first day of the school and led to new facets of understanding these issues in the context of impacts on an actual community. We had a lively conversation about these aspects of the trip as the students asked important questions and commented on things from their individual viewpoints. Students also discussed what they learned from Marcello about the history and culture of the mother church. This transitioned into a conversation about religion and how the cultural perceptions of religion affected both the life and death of individuals for hundreds of years. Dario explained to the students how Sicilians have very close associations with the dead because the bodies remain as representations for the soul. These are culturally important for the living who pray for the souls of the dead and ask them for divine intervention into their everyday lives. For example, one may ask a deceased loved one to help them win the lottery or when they will find love and get married. People also pray for the souls of the dead to help them avoid the fires and suffering of purgatory as the dead are cleansed in the afterlife for their final ascension into heaven.

Lunch was another new and delicious pasta with bacon and tomatoes. We were also served bread, a new-to-us type of salami, a prosciutto and provolone pizza on a puff pastry crust, and a lentil soup with carrots. The conversation over lunch consisted of debating over where one finds the best pizza in the world, the best and worst foods in different countries, and the recovery of a song that we danced to at the eggplant festival a few nights ago.

In the afternoon, we prepared for our trip to Milazzo. We left around 4pm to go see several beautiful churches built during different time periods. We walked around the city and up many steps to see these buildings adorned with sculptures, statues, and frescoes so breathtaking that words cannot describe them properly and pictures do not do them justice.

   

 

        

The Church of Carmine

The Church of St. Maria Maggiore

The body of the Blessed Candida within the Church of St. Francis of Paola

The tiny Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria 

We also saw a Byzantine burial site in the city that was covered by a glass structure to preserve the burial ground. Later, we saw a fenced-in prehistoric occupation dating to the Neolithic. We then walked passed a huge castle on our way to a small museum with interesting fossils and maritime artifacts.

Glass-encased Byzantine burials in the middle of the city.

A Neolithic occupation site.

Castle with church in the background.

Some of the many steps taken during our adventure in Milazzo.

The museum with fossils and memories of the sea that we visited.

Later in the day, we went for a swim off of the coast. We spent a few hours letting the waves carry us to the shore and bobbing in the refreshingly cool, clear waters of the Mediterranean Sea as the sun began to set behind us. Just before it disappeared, seemingly consumed beneath the waves themselves, we were able to get a quick class sunset selfie.

Sunset swimming in Milazzo.

After leaving the beach, we walked over to a seaside restaurant for dinner. Padre Paolo, who is in charge of the convent, and Carmelina, our wonderful cook, as well as Carmelina's daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, joined us for dinner. Katia, our Italian teacher, also joined us a few minutes later. We dined upon pizzas with a variety of delicious toppings, risottos, and pastas. We also had a few different types of bruschetta and fried calamari to get us started. Karl called us to attention during the meal to toast to our amazing hosts, visiting researchers, and the success of the school in its first year. Thanks to Katia, he was able to do the first part of the toast completely in Italian!

 Appetizers of classic bruschetta, fried calamari, and a special seafood bruschetta.

 Two kinds of risotto with seafood.

Salmon tomato pizza (left) and sliced beef with veggies pizza (right).

Four cheese pizza (above) and margarita pizza (below).

We rode home after another full day of fun, food, and new experiences. It is exciting to think about what the final days of the school are going to bring for us! Next up, we will journey to Palermo for a look at the amazing catacombs of the Capuchin Church to see a large collection of mummies, including the famous child mummy, Rosalia Lombardo. Stay tuned!

Written by  Dr. Johnica J. Morrow (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)