A study by Padilla et al 2012 looked at the distribution of funerary pigments in Argar Culture burials of Southern Spain. While reading their paper I was reminded of a few Taklamakan burials, such as the one below.
|Removing the red veil from a Taklamakan mummy (Youtube Link @ 42:34)|
Thousands of miles away in Almeria, Spain, quite a few Argaric men and women also seem to have been veiled with a red cloth. The well-preserved, skeletized Argaric remains often contain residual red pigment, more often over the middle third of the face, but sometimes on the joints of women or in bands over the head. (see Padilla et al, 2012, table 1). The Padilla authors hypothesized that the mercury sulfide residue on the Argaric remains might have been the pigment of a cloth that long since disintegrated.
|Fig.13 Compiled overlay of Argar cinnabar residue (Padilla et al 2010 [Link])|
|Late Mummies of East Central Asia, Victor Mair [Link]|
Luckily, some of these more recent prehistoric cultures fall right at the cusp of the earliest writing and Bronze Age religion. So it's not too much of a stretch to compare our modern and proto-historic behaviors and look for superstitions that might inform our interpretation of these ancient rites.
|A Roman Bride wearing the "Flammenum"|
The Evil Eye superstition is ubiquitous throughout the historical period and a mountain of objects suggest its presence in the concerns of prehistoric folk. A majority of the Neolithic trinkets, amulets, talismans, oculos  , cornos, lunulae, boar's tusks, rowan crooks and blue-eye idols found across the prehistoric world could be convincingly categorized as devices for warding off the Malacchio. Many similar objects such as nazars***, dzi beads, horseshoes, tassels and dingle-balls in modern history do exactly this.
|A traditional Turkish bride|
When and where is not so much important, but the point being that varying degrees of the color red is combined with similarly charmed accessories, such as wearing gold or painting amoeba eye motifs on the hands. In some cultures, red wedding gowns are considered good luck, but perhaps a better understanding is that they are anti-bad luck.
Almost all Eurasian marriages include some sort of degaussing event apart from normal rites of passage (pass-through events). But there are also other devices used for repelling bad luck, such as tin cans, bells, throwing stuff, breaking glass, breaking pottery, plates, etc.
|Traditional Bridal Costumes (Pakistan, Nepal, China, India, Morocco, SE Asia(?)|
In early history red bridal wear was common in much of pre-Medieval Christian Europe, and certainly in early historical Europe. In classical Greece the climatic unveiling of a red-clade bride by her husband, the anakalypteria, is in some ways a forerunner of all European alter ceremonies. The Roman flammeum was common among Roman brides for roughly the same reason, to hide from the evil eye. Prior to the 16th century, most ethic Russian brides wore a red sarafan. Virgin blue was a popular statement in Western Europe during the early Christian era, black in some areas, but red may have been the common dress of Roman era Celts as well.
|Wedding in Kosovo (BlerimBalaj wiki)|
This is part 1 which looks at how marriage traditions might give us some clues to why the Taklamakan woman had her face covered by a red cloth like some Argar burials. Why do so many people have residual red pigment left on their remains extending deep in the Paleolithic?
I'll continue pulling this thread in Part 2 tomorrow!
"The Evil Eye" Alan Dundes, 1981 [Link]
"Beware of the Evil Eye, Volume 1" John Elliot, 2015 [Link]
"The Mummies of East Central Asia" Victor H. Mair [Link]
Gary Varner (2006) "The Mythic Forest, the Green Man and the Spirit of Nature: The Re-emergence.."
Fig 1: B) [Gomez-Merino et al, 2011]
"Why is Ochre Found in Some Graves" National Museum of Denmark
Materias primas y objetos de prestigio en ajuares funerarios como testimonios de redes de intercambio en el Horizonte campaniforme, Liesau and Blasco 2012 [Link]
Ocre y cinabrio en el registro funerario de El Argar. Padilla et al 2010 [Link]
* In Southern Iberia, cinnabar (cinabrio) was likely the source for the majority of the red pigments throughout the Neolithic into the Phoenician times. Luckily (or deceivingly), this doesn't decompose. It's possible that pigments or yarns were being processed at Perdigoes for export [here]. I thought before the high levels could have come from amalgamation and sluicing operations that poisoned the drinking water. Something did.
** and because HgS & Fe2O3 survive decomposition longer than other pigment choices, some caution is needed in the interpretation of funerary pigments.
*** An interesting thing about Nazars, and this is true for all Neolithic and Metal Age eye idols, is that the eyes are always blue, often inlaid with lapis lazuli. Blue-eyed idols from Sumeria or Egypt are often mis-interpreted to represent actual blue-eyed people. But the actual purpose of the idol is to ward off the evil-eye with a blue-eyed idol or amulet, such as a Nazar. A more detailed explanation is given by the ancient Greeks for why blue-eyed people where spell casters.