Archaeology Is Reviving the Smell of History

How reconstructing long-lost smells connects us to the past

- BY GAYOUNG LEE

WHAT'S THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE when you step into a museum? Is it the long-faded colors of ancient artifacts from all around the world or the hushed sounds of visitors discussing what they see? Maybe there's a replica of scratchy old fabric you can touch. Some locations might even offer an edible treat inspired by an ancient recipe. Museums allow us to indirectly experience the past by tapping into our primary senses—sight, hearing, taste, touch—but more often than not, smell is missing.

Representations of the past are often odorless. But smell probably played a huge role in many historical realities, says Barbara Huber, an archaeochemist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. The conspicuous absence of scent in our study of history (not counting the musty tang of many museums) has inspired Huber and a growing community of chemists and archaeologists to track down some molecular remnants that can let us smell the past. For example, she created Scent of the Afterlife, a mix of aromas that captures the range of smells that would have accompanied mummification processes in ancient Egypt. Some of the recent advances in the quest to catch a whiff of history are featured in a new collection co-edited by Huber, Scents of Arabia: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Olfactory Worlds (Archaeopress, 2025).

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN spoke to Huber about the “science of smell” and its significance to our understanding of lives long gone. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

We know smell is linked to very specific areas of the brain. What are these areas, and why does that link make olfactory interactions so important throughout history?