Tickets will go on sale April 9, for the second annual John W. Sanders Lecture on “Ötzi, the 5.300 Tyrolean Iceman and the World’s Oldest Tattoos,” by Aaron Deter-Wolf, prehistoric archaeologist at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology.
Sponsored by the San Juan Basin Archaeological Society in conjunction with the Fort Lewis College Anthropology Department, the lecture will be held at the FLC Ballroom on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m., according to a news release from Janice C. Sheftel, president of the archaeological society. It will be preceded by a cookie reception at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets for the lecture cost $10 plus convenience fees and will be available at the Durango Welcome Center, in person or at 970-247-7657 or at www.durangoconcerts.com. If tickets are still available, they may be purchased for $13 at the door. Half the ticket price will support the SJBAS Internship and Education Fund, which provides two FLC student internships at the Center of Southwest Studies annually and scholarships for the FLC summer archaeology field school.
The ice mummy, known as Ötzi has been studied for nearly three decades.
“Scientists know more about this 5,300-year-old man than perhaps any other ancient human,” Sheftel said in the news release. “Studies have examined of the tools he carried, the clothes he wore, his health conditions, the ingredients of his last meal, deciphered his complete genome, and even identified the bacteria that inhabited his gastrointestinal tract.”
Analysis has also shown that Ötzi bore at least 61 tattoos, perhaps the oldest preserved examples of tattoos.
For the past decade, archaeologist Deter-Wolf, of the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, has studied archaeological evidence for tattoos.
Deter-Wolf, the co-editor of the study “Ancient Ink: The Archaeology of Tattooing” has authored book chapters and articles on tattoo archaeology, and in 2016 appeared in a NOVA documentary discussing Ötzi’s tattoos. On Sept. 15, he plans to discuss Ötzi’s life, death, and discovery, and what his tattoos might tell us about ancient humans.
For more information, call Sheftel at 970-259-5845 or email her at JaniceSheftel@gmail.com.