Wine consumption in Bronze Age Italy: combining organic residue analysis, botanical data and ceramic variability

The gut microbiome buffers dietary adaptation in Bronze Age domesticated dogs

“…Indeed, we found traces of O. aries, V. vinifera, and T. aestivum, confirming not only an omnivorous feeding pattern but also, particularly, the consumption of starchy agricultural foods, as expected from Bronze Age dogs of Italian agriculturalists. In line with our assumptions, those detected are all foods proven to have been included in the habitual diet of humans who inhabited Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean Basin during the Bronze Age (Varalli et al, 2015;Alonso and Bouby, 2017;Sabatini et al, 2019;Arena et al, 2020;Pecci et al, 2020). Although apparently having consumed a starchy diet, Bronze Age Solarolo dogs still exhibit a low copy number of the AMY2B gene, as previously observed in other European Neolithic dogs (Botigué et al, 2017).…”

“…According to our findings, Solarolo dogs showed evidence of a dog-like omnivorous diet. Of interest, our prediction was confirmed by the presence of authenticated ancient DNA mapping to eukaryotic specimens that match known dietary constituents at that time and location, including Ovis aries (sheep), Triticum aestivum (wheat), and Vitis vinifera (grapes) (Varalli et al, 2015;Alonso and Bouby, 2017;Sabatini et al, 2019;Arena et al, 2020;Pecci et al, 2020). See Table 2 for validation of the ancient origin of these taxonomic assignments by the HOPS pipeline (Key et al, 2017;Hü bler et al, 2019;Jensen et al, 2019;Rampelli et al, 2021).…”

Protocol Comparison for Organic Residue Analyses from Waterproofing Materials and Shards of Roman Archaeological Amphorae

“…The esterification advancement, followed by thin-layer chromatography, ensured the effective butylation of standard molecules after three dynamic cycles of 5 min each. Butylated compounds were additionally controlled with infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and NMR ( 1 H, 13 C). GC-MS analyses allowing dibutyl tartrate (DBT) to be characterized with fragment ions at m/z 276, 305 and 391.…”

“…As rightly criticized in literature, neither molecular identification through sole retention or migration time, nor the precision of UV detection are reliable [10,11]. Enhancing the specificity and sensitivity required for wine markers identification as well as providing structural information, gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) became frequently employed [12][13][14][15]. Although recent techniques on the cutting edge of technology showed great analytical advancements, equipment costs remain highly limiting.…”

“…Among the protocols most mentioned to promote the breaking of the intramolecular hydrogen bonding between tartrate salts and the silicate-rich ceramic, either acid or alkaline conditions are favored [9,12,25]. Alkaline treatment is followed by acidification to make tartaric acid more soluble in ethyl acetate before extraction [13,26]. Differently, the acido-catalyzed butylation of the unsolved material after polar extraction greatly evidenced grape derivatives in Neolithic, Etruscan or even Early Medieval Islamic jars [12,27,28].…”