Museo Casa del Mendrugo in Puebla, Mexico

According to Atlas Obscura, Casa del Mendrugo is a museum in a colonial mansion in Puebla, Mexico—its name referring to the crumbs Jesuits received as charity to sustain their ministry. A twenty-ten excavation in the courtyard uncovered a burial site dating back more than two thousand years, with skeletal remains of at least three people, including a woman around sixty years old interred with offerings from approximately thirty-five hundred years ago. That skeleton, which archaeologists nicknamed "Chuchita," belonged to someone who lived in the region long before the city of Puebla was founded in the sixteenth century. The museum's most striking pieces came from a local man, Jorge Roberto Ortiz-Dietz, who donated his personal collection before his death in twenty twelve. Ortiz-Dietz had been the last amo—a position from a remote mountain town called Alteca in Oaxaca that preserved ancient customs well into the twentieth century. Amos were chosen as children and marked by ritual skull deformation; when they died, their skulls were carved with scenes depicting community life and kept for sacred ceremonies. Ortiz-Dietz had guarded the carved skulls of his predecessors before settling in Puebla as a notary, and his donation revealed a vanishing cultural practice to the world. The museum also features Talavera pottery, now recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage—a traditional craft that local artisans continue to produce today.

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