ARCHAEOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY—EXPLORING HISTORY WITH CHEMISTRY - Chemistry: Notable Research and Discoveries - page 169

Ötzi the Iceman, and some artifacts found around his body
(Werner Nosko/EPA/Corbis)
and tree bark. Among his effects were a copper axe, a flint knife, and a
quiver of arrows, although most of the arrows were not finished. The
body was shrunken and hairless—the hair and outer skin had peeled off
the body during its long stay in the ice.
When did this man die? Although the man had clearly died some
time ago, police still could have opened an investigation of a crime com-
mitted at some time in the past, called a cold case since the clues and the
trail of the perpetrator would not be fresh. (Considering the condition
of the body, the term applies in more ways than one.) But radiocarbon
dating established a time of death that rendered any judicial action a
futile exercise: Ötzi did not die a month or a year ago, or any time in the
modern era—he died about 5,300 years in the past, in a period known as
Neolithic (New Stone Age). This makes Ötzi the oldest intact mummy
ever found as of May 2009. Ötzi's age is startling, but radiocarbon dat-
ing, as described in the following sidebar, is a reliable means of dating
organic material.
Radiocarbon dating reveals when Ötzi died, but not how old he was.
Forensic anthropologists can approximate the age at death by studying