A Systematic Approach to the Application of Soft Tissue Histopathology in Paleopathology

Abstract

The application of histology to soft tissue remains offers an important technique to obtain diagnostically important information on various physiological and pathological conditions in paleopathology. In a series of 29 cases with mummified tissue ranging between 16 months and c. 5.200 years of postmortem time interval, we systematically investigated paleohistology and the preservation of various tissues. We established a reproducible histological ranking system for the evaluation of mummified tissue preservation. The application of this scheme to the series showed good tissue preservation of tissues with high connective tissue content but also fat tissue and connective tissue rich organs, such as lung tissue, while most other internal organs were less well preserved despite highly different postmortem time intervals. There are some organs with only poor conservation even in short term periods such as the kidneys and CNS. Artificial mummification does not provide better conservation than naturally mummified tissues; “cold” mummies may be much better conserved than those from desert areas. The identification of specific pathologies underlines the potential power of paleohistology.

Egyptian Canopic Jars at the Crossroad of Medicine and Archaeology: Overview of 100 Years of Research and Future Scientific Expectations

“…The reasons remain unclear but could be due to the rapid decomposition of stomach tissue; therefore, it could be more difficult to identify the relevant gastric structures. As Grove and colleagues observed in their approach to the systematical analysis of soft tissue histopathology in palaeopathology, the brain and the kidney have poor conservation potential and are more difficult to identify due to the lack of connective tissue and absence of certain "key structures," which is instead the case of lung and liver tissues [65].…”

Chronic active non-lethal human-type tuberculosis in a high royal Bavarian officer of Napoleonic times–a mummy study

“…Specimens obtained from several organs and tissues were processed for histological analysis. The preparation of the samples, the rehydration procedure, and the embedding and cutting techniques, have been previously described in detail [ 16 ]. Particularly, samples from both lungs (especially from areas with obvious calcification, but also from all different lobes), the heart, and the abdominal structures, were prepared.…”

“…All histological samples were stained with H&E, connective tissue stains, PAS, Grockotts silver stain, Prussian blue and May-Grünwald-Giemsa stain, Ziehl-Neelsen acid fast bacilli stain, and Kongo red staining for amyloid deposition [ 16 ].…”

Diagnostic dry bone histology in human paleopathology

“…Generally, the tissue is without any remaining cells or soft tissues; so‐called skeletonized or “dry” bone tissue. Sometimes mummification allows for the analysis of preserved soft tissue (Aufderheide, ; Hess et al, ; Ciranni et al, ; Grove et al, ) but such findings are relatively rare. The remainder of this article will thus focus on dry bone tissue.…”