Life and Death in Neolithic Southeastern Italy: The Strontium Isotopic Evidence

Tafuri, Mary Anne; Fullagar, Paul D.; O’Connell, Tamsin C.; Belcastro, Maria Giovanna; Iacumin, Paola; Barbaro, Cecilia Conati; Sanseverino, Rocco; Robb, John

doi:10.1002/oa.2516

Cited by 20 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Therefore, these animals have lived in a substratum with Oligocene-Miocene rocks and/or have ingested food with such a provenance, which means that they lived locally in the Gargano area. One shell from Poggio Imperiale, a locality close to the sea, shows, as expected, a Sr isotope ratio of 0.70909, close to modern seawater 16 . A rodent tooth from Grotta Reali, a Mousterian settlement located about 20 km west of Isernia La Pineta, has an 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of 0.70884.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Therefore, the Sr isotopic signature of sedimentary rocks formed during the time-stretch of geologic interest to the Isernia La Pineta site should lie somewhere between 0.70730 (140 Ma) and modern seawater 0.70917 15 . Animal bones from the Gargano promontory 16 , about 200 km east of Isernia, with outcropping rocks from the Trias to the Miocene, show an 87 Sr/ 86 Sr range from 0.70817 (caprovine from Grotta Scaloria, Neolithic site) to 0.70863 (caprovine from La Torretta/Poggio Imperiale, Neolithic site). These isotopic values fit the Sr isotope ratios predicted by the McArthur curve for the age range of the sedimentary rocks outcropping at the two sites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A rodent tooth from Grotta Reali, a Mousterian settlement located about 20 km west of Isernia La Pineta, has an 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of 0.70884. This area is characterized by carbonate (Jurassic-Lower Miocene) and flysch (Upper Miocene) sedimentary sequences 16 with a predicted Sr isotope range between ~0.7070 and 0.7090 15 . Again, the rodent tooth Sr isotopic composition fits within this range and corresponds to a Tortonian age, characteristic of the flysch deposits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth

Lugli

Cipriani

Arnaud

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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We present the Sr isotopic composition of enamel of the most ancient deciduous tooth ever discovered in Italy to assess human mobility in Middle Pleistocene. Reconstructing ancient mobility is crucial for understanding human strategy at exploiting temporally and spatially patchy resources, with most studies focusing on indirect evidences, ultimately affecting our interpretation on hominin territoriality and energetic costs invested by hominin groups. Here, we use the high spatial resolution and micro-destructivity options offered by the Laser Ablation Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry technique, to determine the 87Sr/ 86Sr intra-tooth variability of a human deciduous incisor from the Middle Pleistocene layers of the Isernia La Pineta site (Italy). We compared these data with the Sr isotopic signature of local micro-mammals, the broadest home-range of the macro-mammals and with modern plant samples. Our study reveals that while macro-mammals have possibly migrated through the landscape for up to 50 km, the pregnant woman from Isernia was probably local, given that the isotopic ratio of the enamel falls within the local range and is comparable with the signature of the local plants in a radius of 10 km. This is the first case study of Sr isotopic composition determination in such ancient deciduous tooth.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth

Lugli

Cipriani

Arnaud

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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“…Out of many hundreds of Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age Europeans whose ancient DNA has now been sequenced, only eight are from south of the Alps (at the time of writing); of these, seven are from northern Italy (including the famous Iceman mummy) and the eighth is from Sicily (Allentoft et al 2015;Keller et al 2012;Olalde et al 2018;Sikora et al 2014). As for stable isotope analysis highlighting residential mobility, the few studies published to date overlook the central peninsula, as well as much of the period in question (Cavazzuti et al 2019;Tafuri et al 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Central Italy: Settlement, Burial, and Social Change at the Dawn of Metal Production

Dolfini

2019

J Archaeol Res

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The Late Neolithic and Copper Age were a time of change in most of Europe. Technological innovations including animal traction, the wheel, and plow agriculture transformed the prehistoric economy. The discovery of copper metallurgy expanded the spectrum of socially significant materials and realigned exchange networks away from Neolithic “greenstone,” obsidian, and Spondylus shells. New funerary practices also emerged, signifying the growing importance of lineage ancestors, as well as new ideas of personal identity. These phenomena have long attracted researchers’ attention in continental Europe and the British Isles, but comparatively little has been done in the Italian peninsula. Building on recent discoveries and interdisciplinary research on settlement patterns, the subsistence economy, the exchange of socially valuable materials, the emergence of metallurgy, funerary practices, and notions of the body, I critically appraise current models of the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition in light of the Italian regional evidence, focusing on central Italy. In contrast to prior interpretations of this period as the cradle of Bronze Age social inequality and the prestige goods economy, I argue that, at this juncture, prehistoric society reconfigured burial practices into powerful new media for cultural communication and employed new materials and objects as novel identity markers. Stratified political elites may not be among the new identities that emerged at this time in the social landscape of prehistoric Italy.

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“…Strontium isotope data of human deciduous teeth from Grotta Paglicci. The approximate crown formation timings are from(68).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Strontium and stable isotope evidence of human mobility strategies across the Last Glacial Maximum in southern Italy

et al. 2019

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Understanding the reason(s) behind changes of human mobility strategies through space and time is a major challenge in paleoanthropology. Most of the time this is due to the lack of suitable temporal sequences of human skeletal specimens during critical climatic or cultural shifts. Here, we present temporal variations in the Sr isotope composition of 14 human deciduous teeth and the N and C stable isotope ratios of 4 human remains from the Grotta Paglicci site (Apulia, Southern Italy). The specimens were recovered from the Gravettian and Epigravettian layers, across the Last Glacial Maximum, and dated between 31210-33103 and 18334-19869 cal BP (2σ). The two groups of individuals exhibit different 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios and while the Gravettians are similar to the local macrofauna in terms of Sr isotopic signal, the Epigravettians are shifted towards higher radiogenic Sr ratios. These data, together with stable isotopes, can be explained by the adoption of different mobility strategies between the two groups with the Gravettians exploiting logistical mobility strategies and the Epigravettian applying residential mobility.

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Life and Death in Neolithic Southeastern Italy: The Strontium Isotopic Evidence

Cited by 20 publications

References 31 publications

Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth

Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth

From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Central Italy: Settlement, Burial, and Social Change at the Dawn of Metal Production

Strontium and stable isotope evidence of human mobility strategies across the Last Glacial Maximum in southern Italy

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