Matteo Giaccari

Reconstructing past lifeways and diets is essential to understanding the emergence of urban societies. However, in what are now arid environments like southern Mesopotamia, poor collagen preservation has long hampered direct isotopic analysis of trophic levels. This limitation has left key gaps in our understanding of subsistence in one of the world’s earliest urban heartlands. Here, we apply zinc isotope analysis to human and faunal dental enamel from the third-millennium BCE site of Abu Tbeirah (Iraq), integrating δ13C, δ18O, and trace element ratios (Ba/Ca and Sr/Ca). This multiproxy approach reveals an omnivorous diet based on C3 cereals, terrestrial animal products (likely including pigs), and limited freshwater resources, with no or little evidence of marine fish consumption, despite the site’s proximity to the ancient shoreline. Dietary patterns do not vary by sex, suggesting broad access to similar food sources within this nonelite population. Moreover, zinc and carbon isotopes proved valuable in identifying animal feeding practices. Our results provide direct dietary evidence from southern Mesopotamia, overcoming long-standing preservation challenges. The results allow us to evaluate specific expectations about diet and animal management in a collagen-poor context, also highlighting early-life feeding behaviors. They demonstrate the power of zinc isotopes to reconstruct trophic level in collagen-poor contexts, opening broad avenues for bioarchaeological research in early complex societies.

This study investigates patterns of mobility and human-animal-environment interactions in the Sumerian city of Abu Tbeirah, located in southern Iraq and dated to the second half of the third millennium BCE. The research represents the first extensive strontium isotope investigation of a population from southern Mesopotamia. It integrates 87Sr/86Sr ratios measured on human and animal dental enamel with δ13C and δ18O data presented in an earlier study. Using published data from part of southwest Asia, we isotopically characterise the regions potentially connected to Sumerian exchange and trade routes. This comparative framework enables the evaluation of Abu Tbeirah in relation to other contemporaneous sites and populations, allowing relative mobility within the Mesopotamian plain to be assessed for a subset of individuals. Moreover, the multi-isotope approach provides insights into the possible effects of climatic variability on local lifeways. Overall, the integration of multi-isotopic data from Abu Tbeirah contributes to refining the Mesopotamian isotopic landscape and offers new perspectives on mobility patterns and environmental adaptations between the third and second millennia BCE.

DATAMESOP is one of the first comprehensive isotopic datasets aimed at supporting bioarchaeological studies in ancient Mesopotamia. The dataset compiles radiogenic strontium and stable carbon, and oxygen isotope measurements from both archaeological (human and animal remains and plant and soil samples) and nonarchaeological sources (surface rocks, soil, dust, water, and rainwater) in South-West Asia. The data have been collected, ensuring the quality and reliability of isotopic measurements and the comparability of the standards, from published studies. This dataset is designed to be user-friendly for archaeologists and isotope specialists, including contextual information that might facilitate data use and interpretation, particularly in regions like Mesopotamia (Iraq, Iran, and Turkey), where isotopic data are scarce and, more generally, challenging to obtain. We believe that this comprehensive dataset will contribute to isotopic investigations in these regions. The dataset is stored in the Pandora platform.

From the 20th century, the division between sciences and art became more pronounced, as brilliantly highlighted by Charles Percy Snow. The two realms – as he called them – drifted apart due to the apparent differences in their languages, creating significant limitations for societal pro-gress. Today, Snow’s concerns remain relevant and are of great interest to both artistic and scientific communities. Moreover, science has become fragmented into various branches. In response to this division, many art movements have attempted to bridge the gap by focusing on specific scientific fields (e.g., physics and biology). However, this has left gaps in exploring the connection between art and other scientific disciplines. Here, we present Chem-Art, a developing artistic movement that uses methods – either heuristic or strictly scientific – to explore the relationship between art and chemistry. Thanks to initiatives such as SAGacia (Smart), which foster dialogue between these two disciplines in mutually meaningful ways, we aim to reduce this division.

In this paper, we aim to reconstruct the dietary habits of supposedly lower rank nobles or middle-class High Middle Ages individuals recovered from the cloister arcade of San Pier Scheraggio within the Uffizi Museum complex in Florence, Italy. Notably, the High Middle Ages was a period of cultural and social changes, which is partly reflected in the dietary habits, as suggested by historical sources. Here we apply stable carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur isotope analysis on humans (n = 34) and animals (n = 13) from San Pier Scheraggio to directly investigate food consumption in this peculiar assemblage. The diet of human individuals was based on terrestrial C3 sources without clear contribution of marine fish (δ13C mean and 1SD: −19.5 ± 0.7 ‰; δ15N mean and 1SD: 9.6 ± 0.4 ‰; δ34S values are mean and 1SD: 7.6 ± 1.2 ‰). The comparison with animal and human samples from other Italian Middle Ages contexts shows that the overall diet of the population buried at San Pier Scheraggio is in line with that of other mediaeval communities in Italy, although with a generally higher contribution of terrestrial animal products. Our data seem to suggest that at the site there was no dietary differentiation concerning age at death or biological sex of the individuals. Some differences, however, can be outlined, for example, in the contribution of C4 crops. In addition to this, we identify two individuals as possible non-locals.