800-year-old Mummy Discovered by Archaeologists in Peru Analysis

Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marco

The article I decided to analyze, like my previous blog analysis, is quite different from the last. The title of the article is Archaeologist Unearth 800- year-old Mummy in Peru by Nora Mcgreevy from Smithsonian Magazine. The article goes in depth of the new findings of the mummy found in Peru's central coast and the living of indigenous people such as the Incas. The article is such an interesting piece and it does a great job providing media for their audience because it is such an amazing new discovery that they continue to add one from their previous discovery of the mummified woman in Lima.

Throughout the article you will see 2 pictures of the discovered mummy and one video of a previous mummified woman surrounded in text. The author places the pictures in an organized way where pictures fit the description of the text. I think the placement of each picture makes the reader easily follow along and gain information out of it. The structure of the actual text is very structured and organized and has a nice color contrast from the background color and the text font. As well as the paragraphs are quite short so it feels like you aren't reading much and makes you feel like you want to read more and expected to read much more even after being done. This does a great job leaving the reader to go out of their way and do personal research on the discovery. It makes it somewhat personal for the reader because you feel like you have a connection with the story now that you have a better understanding of it. Another thing I liked from the story was that they include how learning about pre-hispanic times was a discovery and many don't find that hispanics don't get a lot of recognition about their culture and traditions from their indiginous ancestors.

To add on from the great media of the photos of the recently discovered mummified man, they also include a video of a previous discovery of a perfectly mummified woman and grave goods. This gives a good compare and contrast of both mummies. Although the mummified man wasn't perfect like the woman, they do a good job creating similarities from the oval tombs, grave goods, and location in Peru. Something I would have changed in this article would be providing more media coverage such as more photographs of the mummy or even a video interviewing the archaeologists who found this discovery. Although this might be a limitation. As mentioned before, the article is very well organized and easy to follow, as well as creating a good storyline for the discovery. The background information and current given information of the discovery and researchers compliment each other extremely well with the media provided. This definitely creates a successful story for the audience of Smithsonian and just curious readers like myself.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-unearth-800-year-old-mummy-in-peru-180979134/