Analisi isotopiche e bioarcheologia come fonti per lo studio del popolamento tra tardo antico e alto medioevo in Italia settentrionale.
Dati a confronto per le province di Bergamo, Modena e Verona.
This thesis analyzes seven cemeteries datable between the 4th and the 8th century AD, located in three areas of Northern Italy (Bergamo, Modena, Verona), through a multidisciplinary approach based on archaeology, bio-archaeology and stable isotopes analysis, to be applied to skeletal materials. The aim is to investigate the characteristics of the population from the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods, focusing on the themes of nutrition and individuals’ migration, examined through the chemical analysis of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium.
The analyzed sample is composed by 254 individuals, which were kindly provided by the Archaeological Soprintendenza of Veneto, Lombardia and Emilia Romagna. In each different area both late antique and early medieval cemeteries were studied, in order to compare the data in diachrony: in the Bergamo area the necropolis selected were the ones of Covo loc. Bellinzana (4th-6th c.), Caravaggio loc. Masano (6th-7th c.) and Fara Olivana (6th-8th c.); in the Modena area, Spilamberto via Macchioni (4th-6th c.) and Cava Ponte del Rio (6th-8th c.); in the Verona area, Povegliano loc. Croce (4th-6th c.) e loc. Ortaia (6th-8th c.).
First of all, the author highlights the funerary rites using the the analysis of the graves taphonomy. The implementation of bio-archaeology enabled the reconstruction of the biological profile (gender, age at the death, height), the health condition and employment activities of each individual, in order to define the whole composition and lifestyle of the population. The analysis showed that, in spite of the hard working condition, the general health was fair.
The results of the stable isotopes analysis of carbon and nitrogen of both collagen (bones and dentin) and carbonate of dental enamel mark territorial differences in nutrition between the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Different systems of subsistence between coeval late antique necropolis can be observed, in fact in Covo (Bg) nutrition was based on C4 plants, such as millet (Panicum miliaceum and Setaria Italica) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor); instead, diet in Spilamberto (Mo) was based on C3 plants, such as wheat, barley and oats. The use of different plants could be referred to different economies. The analyzed early medieval individuals show a nutrition based on C3, a kind of diet which could indicate either a cultural choice as well as an access to more food resources by these communities than the late antique populations.
With reference to the mobility of the population, the data acquired both from the dental enamel carbonate (carbon and oxygen) and from the dentin, indicate only 3 possible allochthonous individuals (1 from the site of Caravaggio and 2 from Povegliano, Ortaia). A pilot study about the isotopic analysis of strontium, performed in order to track allochthonous individuals in the Spilamberto (Mo) cemetery, shows that 3 women had different origins in comparison to the other people buried in the same necropolis.
In the whole, the data aquired are currently opening new research perspectives about the characteristics of both society and economies in the transitional period between Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Northern Italy
