Recent advances in the characterization of hair of mummies from the Chilean Andean coast

• Radiocarbon dating of the hair of two Andean mummies suggests the Formative period.
• Heavy metals, like Fe, Mn or Pb, and also arsenic were detected in the hair fibers.
• Hair cuticle shows a good global conservation state at a structural level.
• First step of a proteomics approach is performed to assess conservation state.

Two pre-Hispanic mummies from the Andean coast, belonging to a corpus of 16 mummies from the San Miguel de Azapa (Arica, Chile), were radiocarbon dated and analyzed in order to replace them in their historical context and to study the conservation state of the hair fibers and the heavy metal presence. The radiocarbon dating placed both mummies in the Formative period (1700 years BC to 500 years AD). Global and elemental analyses were performed using scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. These combined techniques enabled to prove the good global conservation state of the mummies’ hair and to detect iron, lead, bromide and also arsenic in some cases, in significant amounts inside the hair fibers. Fourier transformed infra-red spectroscopy seemed to prove the good conservation state of the hair surface at a structural level that is why the conservation of hair proteins at a molecular level will be investigated by a proteomics approach in future work.