Bronze Age Iceman On Display In Italy

BOLZANO, Italy - "Otzi" the Bronze Age iceman has cometh to the modern age.

After lying undisturbed for 5,300 years under an Alpine glacier near the Italian border with Austria, Otzi's perfectly mummified remains have been installed in Bolzano's archaeology museum and put on public view for the first time since German hikers discovered them seven years ago.

Otzi - nicknamed after the Otzal Alps where the remains were found - was a hunter, believed to be about 45, who carried a crude ax and iron-tipped arrows, examples of technology in the Bronze Age when metals were first used regularly for tools and weapons.

In his new incarnation as museum showpiece, Otzi is enjoying some late-20th-century comforts, including a specially designed refrigeration chamber that re-creates the icy conditions of the glacier so he can continue to be preserved for generations to come.

Local businesses, hoping to profit from tourists drawn by the exhibit, are offering a range of Otzi products such as Otzi pizza, Otzi ice cream and chocolate Otzis, a creation of chocolate, marzipan and nuts.

The hoopla surrounding Otzi's unveiling was a far cry from the quiet remoteness of the snow-covered glacier where he was found. After his discovery, rescue workers excavated the remains and transported them to the forensic-medicine department of Austria's Innsbruck University.

Scientists are not sure how he died, but the most accepted theory is that he lay down to sleep and froze to death. "He was probably exhausted. He died quite peacefully," said Friedrich Tiefenbrunner, a microbiologist at Innsbruck University who was visiting Otzi's new home in Bolzano.

Otzi's significance is that he is the best-preserved prehistoric man ever discovered with his own equipment and clothing.

"Usually these types of discoveries are burial tombs where family members have carefully chosen the articles with which the dead are buried. In this case, we have a candid snapshot of daily life more than 5,000 years ago," said Lorenzo Dal Ri, director of the archaeology museum in Bolzano.

Otzi was the subject of a territorial dispute between Italy and Austria during his years at Innsbruck. While Austria had custody of the mummy, Italy claimed it had been found on Italian soil and therefore should be returned. The situation was delicate because of long-running resentment in Austria over Italy's annexation of South Tyrol after World War I.

An Italian-Austrian commission determined Otzi had indeed been found in Italy, 300 feet from the Austrian border, but Italy agreed to allow Otzi to remain in Austria for further study before bringing him back across the border.

On moving day in January, Otzi was carefully packed into a body bag with dry ice and loaded onto a refrigerated truck for transport to Bolzano.

The date of the transfer was kept secret, partly because of threats from Austrian nationalists who have never recognized the South Tyrol annexation. Austrian police escorted the truck to the border crossing at Brenner Pass, and Italian police took over for the final leg of the journey.

The iceman exhibit is indeed impressive. After seeing a multimedia display about Otzi's discovery, visitors pass behind a screen to a darkened area lined on one side by the silvery metal panels of the refrigerated cell. A small, double-paneled window allows a view of the mummy, a brown skeleton lying on its back on a metal table.

From there, visitors enter another room where they can see the artifacts found with Otzi, including part of a woven grass cape believed to be a prehistoric raincoat, fur leggings, bearskin booties and goatskin undergarments.

Dal Ri and officials of the provincial government disapprove of the rash of Otzi-inspired products, saying they could cheapen an important scientific discovery.

An ice-cream parlor set up a big handmade sign showing two white mountain peaks on a blue background with a bug-like man scaling one of the peaks. It advertised Otzi ice cream: vanilla with caramel and pine nuts. A bakery offered realistic Otzi candy for about $10: a macabre milk-chocolate skeleton lying on a bed of white chocolate.