Stories from Sicily: Of Lice and Ancient Men

Today's blogpost is from our friend Haley Carr.

A Milazzo sunset from the water

Tuesday, August 1st, 2017

Today was very productive. We started the day with a series of lectures from Dr. Reinhard and Dr. Morrow about parasites. We learned about some of the history of the field, some parasite recovering techniques, and a few case studies ranging from a bog body in Denmark to mummies in southern Peru.

Dr. Reinhard talks about parasites from different sites

It was interesting to learn about how ectoparasites can be just as damaging as endoparasites, and that many historic diseases were caused by viruses who used lice, ticks, and other ectoparasites as a vector for infection.

Dr. Morrow also gives a presentation on parasites

We then had our Italian lesson where we learned a very long list of verbs and how to conjugate them. It expanded our Italian vocabulary and will hopefully allow us to communicate better with the locals here in Santa Lucia.

Pasta with red pepper sauce

When Italian was over we had lunch which was red pepper pasta. We all liked it a lot and wanted to get the recipe. We also had little balls of what appeared to be fried bread. Some of the students commented it looked like a hush puppy without the filling. They were also delicious.

Fried almost-hushpuppies

After lunch we started our lab activities. We were broken up into pairs and rotated between a crypt activity and a parasite activity. In the crypt we analyzed a few of the ossuaries per group and tried to determine how many individuals were present in each ossuary, whether they were male or female, how old they were, if they had any pathologies, and if there was any soft tissue preservation or insect activity. After we analyzed the ossuaries, many of us found that each one often had more than one person's remains inside. Some of them had mismatched skulls and mandibles. This activity will be important later on so the bones can be rearranged. Each group also analyzed a niche, which had more soft tissue preservation and usually only one individual present.

Ruth looks for lice in a sample

For the parasite activity, we looked at three different hair/scalp samples from Chinchorro mummies. Using a square template, we counted the number of louse nits in three different areas along the sample, took an average, then divided by two in order to get the number of nits per centimeter squared. The samples ranged from being heavily concentrated in lice to having none at all.

After the labs were done, we got ready to go to Milazzo. It was very hot so we walked fairly rapidly through the city and saw a few of the historic sites including a Bronze Age excavation site, a museum of artifacts collected there, a church, and another church that had the patron saint of Milazzo's body inside. However, there was a wedding going on inside so we had to crash the wedding in our sweaty clothes to observe the saint which was probably not appreciated by the wedding attendees, but that's what you have to do in the name of science I guess.

Touring around Milazzo

A Bronze Age archaeological site

Beautiful paintings on the ceiling of a church

Pottery at the museum

After we saw everything we had time to see, we walked down to the beach and went for a swim. After the hot hike around the city, we were happy to be in the refreshing water. It was so clear you could see the bottom and we spent a couple of hours swimming around and laying on the beach enjoying the excellent view of the ocean and the castle before it was time to head back to the convent.

Clear water and the pebbles beneath it

Selfie with the group

Being cool...somewhat

Recapturing last years group photo with this year's students

After an arduous hike back up to the convent in Santa Lucia, we had a delicious meal prepared by the wonderful Carmelina of mushrooms and tuna salad. After all the hiking and swimming we did it was good to have something to eat. All in all, it was a great day and we accomplished a lot while still having a lot of fun.