Icemania - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Icemania	September 10, 1998
by Paul G. Bahn

Our hero decorates the label of "Ötziwein" in a Bolzano storefront. (Paul Bahn) [LARGER IMAGE]

ARCHAEOLOGY's contributing editor Paul G. Bahn has just returned from the northern Italian city of Bolzano, where he visited the new museum housing Ötzi, the iceman discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 (see "Mummy Goes Home," May/June 1992). Bahn is preparing a forthcoming review of the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology for the magazine, and took the following snapshots of storefronts nearby the museum. He has this to report:

An ice cream parlor selling Ötzi cones (Paul Bahn) [LARGER IMAGE]

"The small private shop in the museum sells the usual fare--Iceman books (mostly in German, one or two also in Italian), a basic guidebook (available in Italian, German, or English), and a few postcards, as well as Iceman T-shirts and baseball caps (very different from his own garments and his bear-fur cap with chin straps!). Among the more exotic items available are Iceman badges, pins, cigarette lighters, key rings, notepads, and boxes of Ötzi ice tea. There is even an archaeological novel about him, which comes with a CD of original musical accompaniment, with a photo of his tattoos on the cover. Despite the importance of their most famous citizen, the town as a whole has not gone Ötzi mad. However, in stores near the museum one can find "Ötzi ice cream," an "Ötzi cake" (which looks like ET in a straw hat), and bottles of "Ötzi wine," with an unappealing color drawing of the Iceman's head and torso on its label."

Ötzi chocolate statues, left, [LARGER IMAGE] and the sign at the entrance to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, right [LARGER IMAGE] (Paul Bahn)