Addressing the controversial origin of the marble source used in the Phoenician anthropoid sarcophagi of Gadir (Cadiz, Spain)

Dating from the fifth century bce, two Phoenician anthropoid sarcophagi, a male and a female, found in Gadir (Cadiz, Spain), are so far the most ancient marble sculptures found in the Iberian Peninsula. The identification of the source of the marble used to produce them has been a subject of controversy for several decades and has recently resurfaced when it was published that they were made by Phoenician artisans using Iberian marble from Macael. This identification is not only unreasonable from an archaeological point of view but also unsupported by any analytical data. On the contrary, as the sarcophagi belong to an Eastern Mediterranean Sidonian production, their raw material is most likely to be Greek-Minor Asian in origin. In order to shed a light on this dispute and objectively resolve the provenance of the marble, a multi-method analytical approach was carried out. Optical microscopy, cathodoluminescence analyses, and C and O stable isotopes clarify the provenance of the marble, confirming that both singular sarcophagi were carved in a Cycladic marble, in accordance with their Sidonian style

Grotta Romanelli (Southern Italy, Apulia). Legacies and issues in excavating a key site for the Pleistocene of the Mediterranean

Grotta Romanelli, located on the Adriatic coast of southern Apulia (Italy), is considered a key site for the Mediterranean Pleistocene for its archaeological and palaeontological contents. The site, discovered in 1874, was re-evaluated only in 1900, when P. E. Stasi realised that it contained the first evidence of the Palaeolithic in Italy. Starting in 1914, G. A. Blanc led a pioneering excavation campaign, for the first-time using scientific methods applied to systematic palaeontological and stratigraphical studies. Blanc proposed a stratigraphic framework for the cave. Different dating methods (C-14 and U/Th) were used to temporally constrain the deposits. The extensive studies of the cave and its contents were mostly published in journals with limited distribution and access, until the end of the 1970s, when the site became forgotten. In 2015, with the permission of the authorities, a new excavation campaign began, led by a team from Sapienza University of Rome in collaboration with IGAG CNR and other research institutions. The research team had to deal with the consequences of more than 40 years of inactivity in the field and the combined effect of erosion and legal, as well as illegal, excavations. In this paper, we provide a database of all the information published during the first 70 years of excavations and highlight the outstanding problems and contradictions between the chronological and geomorphological evidence, the features of the faunal assemblages and the limestone artefacts

NMR as a new tool for cultural heritage application: The provenance of ancient white marbles

Identifying the origin of marble used in antiquity brings back to light details of the economic, social and political organization of classical societies, and characterizing in depth the chemistry of marble is key to discovering its provenance. Beyond X-ray diffraction, which could reveal the presence of discriminant secondary crystalline phases and the quantification of accessory minerals combined with a multivariate analysis approach, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) enables one to recognize the local structure arrangement of both crystalline and amorphous materials by looking at one or more selected atoms. In present paper targets the 13C nuclide, and thus the major component of marble, calcium carbonate. Whatever their geological origin, marbles 13C-NMR spectra present only one resonance corresponding to the carboxyl function whose intensity and line width vary from one marble to another. If the variation of the NMR signal intensity observed is the result of great T1 variations (from 220 to 5300 s) and is linked to iron content, the line width reflects defects in the calcite crystal in which calcium has been replaced by another element such as magnesium, aluminium or strontium. The specific profile of the NMR signal has been used successfully to help determine the origin of some archaeological items

Petrography and mineralogy of the white marble and black stone of Göktepe (Mugla, Turkey) used in antiquity: New data for provenance determination

The discovery near Göktepe (Mugla province, Western Turkey) of an ancient quarrying site of white marbles and black stones has recently been reported by some authors. Assigning the provenance of stone from ancient artifacts to Göktepe is currently possible mainly thanks to chemical, EPR and MGS data. Petrographic description, which many researchers use to characterize ancient marbles, is still incomplete. Several thin sections of both types of stone were thus examined in this study, and also used for cathodoluminescence analysis. As the rock is >99% calcite, trace minerals could only be detected in some samples by XRD analysis of insoluble residues after acetic acid attack. Data on strontium and manganese contents and carbon and oxygen isotopes were also recorded, for better understanding of some petrographic features. A new method of grain size characterization was tentatively introduced to improve the description of grain size variability in the white marble. Microstructure and grain size measurements on thin sections of this marble identify two petrographic varieties: the first is extremely fine with signs of dynamic recrystallization, and the second exhibits texture and MGS similar to those of Carrara marble. Statuary samples of white marble from Villa Adriana (Tivoli, Rome), preliminarily assigned in a previous study partly to Carrara and partly to Göktepe quarry, are reconsidered here. A certain degree of variability was found in the structures and textures in the thin sections of the Göktepe black stone. It may have undergone transformations at an advanced stage of diagenesis. One important source of this variability seems to be a fluid alteration event, revealed by both isotopic and chemical data and trace mineral assemblages

MotifScorer: using a compendium of microarrays to identify regulatory motifs

We describe MotifScorer, a program for systematic genome-wide identification of transcription sites. The program uses a compendium of gene expression microarrays and implements state-of-art partial least squares (PLSs) based regression and stepwise regression procedures. Candidate motifs from the upstream sequences of groups of co-regulated genes are identified and assigned a score using genomic background models and available motif finding tools. The use of a large library of expression data allows statistical comparative analysis of the specificity of motifs identified in different conditions

Current trends in the bioinformatic sequence analysis of metabolic pathways in prokaryotes

The study of metabolic pathways is becoming increasingly important to exploit an integrated, systems-level approach for optimizing a desired cellular property or phenotype. In this context, the integration of genomics data with genetic, metabolic and regulatory models is essential because the systematic design of artificial, biological systems requires the identification of robust building blocks like gene promoters, metabolic pathways or genetic circuits taken from natural organisms, and manipulated to develop ad hoc features. Computational tools allowing precise descriptions of natural pathways might thus allow improving the performance of artificial routes. In this review, we introduce the most recent bioinformatics tools enabling detailed characterizations of metabolic pathways in bacteria from different perspectives

Analysis of the CtrA Pathway in Magnetospirillum Reveals an Ancestral Role in Motility in Alphaproteobacteria

Developmental events across the prokaryotic life cycle are highly regulated at the transcriptional and posttranslational levels. Key elements of a few regulatory networks are conserved among phylogenetic groups of bacteria, although the features controlled by these conserved systems are as diverse as the organisms encoding them. In this work, we probed the role of the CtrA regulatory network, conserved throughout the Alphaproteobacteria, in the magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum magneticum strain AMB-1, which possesses unique intracellular organization and compartmentalization. While we have shown that CtrA in AMB-1 is not essential for viability, it is required for motility, and its putative phosphorylation state dictates the ability of CtrA to activate the flagellar biosynthesis gene cascade. Gene expression analysis of strains expressing active and inactive CtrA alleles points to the composition of the extended CtrA regulon, including both direct and indirect targets. These results, combined with a bioinformatic study of the AMB-1 genome, enabled the prediction of an AMB-1-specific CtrA binding site. Further, phylogenetic studies comparing CtrA sequences from alphaproteobacteria in which the role of CtrA has been experimentally examined reveal an ancestral role of CtrA in the regulation of motility and suggest that its essential functions in other alphaproteobacteria were acquired subsequently