Anita Radini

University College Dublin | UCD · School of Archaeology

The Neolithic burial of Grotta di Pietra Sant’Angelo (CS) represents a unique archaeological finding for the prehistory of Southern Italy. The unusual placement of the inhumation at a rather high altitude and far from inhabited areas, the lack of funerary equipment and the prone deposition of the body find limited similarities in coeval Italian sit...

This paper represents the first isotopic study on late antique human mobility in North Africa, using the urban site of Bulla Regia in Tunisia as a case study. We also present the first values for bioavailable 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in northern Tunisia, analysing 63 plant and snail samples, as well as a simple method for the pre-processing of plants in the fi...

Starch granules and other plant tissues are commonly found as part of the microdebris assemblage analysed within dental calculus. These are often interpreted as evidence of past diets. However, many of the starch granules extracted from dental calculus are intact, and do not show evidence of alterations as a result of being processed for consumptio...

RATIONALE Dental calculus (mineralized dental plaque) is composed primarily of hydroxyapatite. We hypothesize that the carbonate component of dental calculus will reflect the isotopic composition of ingested simple carbohydrates. Therefore, dental calculus carbonates may be an indicator for sugar consumption, and an alternative to bone carbonate in...

The study of ancient human dental calculus (mineralized dental plaque, also known as tartar) is becoming increasingly important in osteoarchaeology, human palaeoecology and environmental archaeology. Microremains of different origin (e.g. starch granules, pollen, phytoliths, feather barbules) as well as biomolecules and chemical compounds retrieved...

Forager focus on wild cereal plants has been documented in the core zone of domestication in southwestern Asia, while evidence for forager use of wild grass grains remains sporadic elsewhere. In this paper, we present starch grain and phytolith analyses of dental calculus from 60 Mesolithic and Early Neolithic individuals from five sites in the Dan...

Forager focus on wild cereal plants has been documented in the core zone of domestication in southwestern Asia, while evidence for forager use of wild grass grains remains sporadic elsewhere. In this paper, we present starch grain and phytolith analyses of dental calculus from 61 Mesolithic and Early Neolithic individuals from five sites in the Dan...

The analysis of dental calculus (mineralised dental plaque) has become an increasingly important facet of bioarchaeological research. Although microscopic analysis of microdebris entrapped within dental calculus has revealed important insights into the diet, health, and environment of multiple prehistoric populations, relatively few studies have ex...

After the Battle Dunbar between English and Scottish forces in 1650, captured Scottish soldiers were imprisoned in Durham and many hundreds died there within a few weeks. The partial skeletal remains of 28 of these men were discovered in 2013. Building on previous osteological work, here we report wide-ranging scientific studies of the remains to a...

Objectives: The analysis of prehistoric human dietary habits is key for understanding the effects of paleoenvironmental changes on the evolution of cultural and social human behaviors. In this study, we compare results from zooarchaeological, stable isotope and dental calculus analyses as well as lower second molar macrowear patterns to gain a bro...

The excavation of the 8000-year-old Hidden Valley village has highlighted the importance of wild plant exploitation in the Mid-Holocene contexts of the Farafra Oasis. This site yielded high numbers of plant macro-remains, which were analysed during the early 2000s by A.G. Fahmy. Among these, Sorghum and other species of wild grasses, often found ch...

Excavations on the south-eastern slopes of King Barrow Ridge, 1.5 km east of Stonehenge, revealed five pits, a grave and other features of Middle Neolithic date. Analysis of the pit assemblages and the partial inhumation interred in the grave has provided insights into lifeways in this landscape in the late fourth millennium cal BC. Evidence sugges...

In this paper, we investigate the complexities of early Neolithic diet in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and post-LBK communities of central Europe. Despite regional and local instances of variation in subsistence activities, isotopic evidence suggests that diet was broadly similar across its distribution, perhaps even working to foster social relatio...

This paper presents the first multi-tissue study of diet in post-medieval London using both the stable light isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen and analysis of microdebris in dental calculus. Dietary intake was explored over short and long timescales. Bulk bone collagen was analysed from humans from the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy (QCS) (n = 6...

In recent years, several works have proved the reliability of the application of 3D modeling and spatial analysis in the study of stone tool use. Monitoring surface morphometry resulting from the use of lithic tools has the potential to objectively quantify and identify patterns of modifications associated to specific activities and worked material...

During the European Middle Ages, the opening of long-distance Asian trade routes introduced exotic goods, including ultramarine, a brilliant blue pigment produced from lapis lazuli stone mined only in Afghanistan. Rare and as expensive as gold, this pigment transformed the European color palette, but little is known about its early trade or use. He...

Current approaches in diet-related bioarchaeological research focus on establishing major developments in ancient societies, whilst small-scale and high-resolution studies of social constituents of past food consumption have gained far less attention. We conducted a multiproxy study of ancient diet in the 12th–13th century AD cemetery at Kukruse, N...

Osteobiographies of four individuals whose skeletal remains were recovered in 2015-16 from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site are constructed, drawing upon evidence from funerary taphonomy, radiocarbon dating, osteological study, stable isotope analyses, and microscopic and biomolecular analyses of dental calculus. The burials comprise an adult fro...

Archaeological dental calculus has emerged as a rich source of ancient biomolecules, including proteins. Previous analyses of proteins extracted from ancient dental calculus revealed the presence of the dietary milk protein β-lactoglobulin, providing direct evidence of dairy consumption in the archaeological record. However, the potential for calcu...

In this contribution we dismantle the perceived role of marine resources and plant foods in the subsistence economy of Holocene foragers of the Central Mediterranean using a combination of dental calculus and stable isotope analyses. The discovery of fish scales and flesh fragments, starch granules and other plant and animal micro-debris in the den...

Avian eggshell survives well in alkaline and neutral soils, but its potential as an archaeological resource remains largely unexplored, mainly due to difficulties in its identification. Here we exploit the release of novel bird genomes and, for the first time on eggshell, use MALDI-ToF (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation-time of flight) ma...

Occupational health is a major issue in the modern workplace with professionals and agencies specializing in keeping employees in good health and, subsequently, more productive. It is striking that according to health organizations, in the UK over half a million people are annually injured at work, with overall economic costs in the order of billio...

Sima del Elefante, Atapuerca, Spain contains one of the earliest hominin fragments yet known in Europe, dating to 1.2 Ma. Dental calculus from a hominin molar was removed, degraded and analysed to recover entrapped remains. Evidence for plant use at this time is very limited and this study has revealed the earliest direct evidence for foods consume...

Dental calculus is a mineralized plaque biofilm formed by microbiota of the oral microbiome. Until recently, the vast research potential of dental calculus for archaeological study was not fully appreciated and it was often discarded. It is now recognized that dental calculus entombs and preserves valuable microfossils and biomolecules within its m...

Dental calculus (mineralized dental plaque) was first recognised as a potentially useful archaeological deposit in the 1970s, though interest in human dental calculus as a resource material has increased sharply in the past few years. The majority of recent research has focused on the retrieval of plant microfossils embedded in its matrix and inter...

A modern burial experiment was devised to test microscopic residue survival in acidic peat and slightly acidic clay soils at the Early Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire, UK), and at nearby control location. The experiment addresses concerns regarding the applicability of residue analysis in varied burial environments, and particularly i...

This paper presents a preliminary study of the analysis of organic residues of Early and Middle Jomon pottery and ‘charred remains.’ Samples are taken from the Sannai Maruyama site and the Sannai Maruyama No. 9 site in Aomori City, Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. The following questions are addressed in this study: (i) Do organic residues surv...

Significance The starch record entrapped in dental calculus of Mesolithic human teeth from the site of Vlasac in the central Balkans provides direct evidence that complex Late Mesolithic foragers of this region consumed domesticated cereal grains. Our results challenge the established view of the Neolithization in Europe that domestic cereals were...

Outlines the aims, objectives and methods of a new research programme (The ‘Hidden Foods’ project) aimed at reconstructing the importance of plant foods in prehistoric forager subsistence in Southern Europe, with a particular focus on Italy and the Balkans.

Like many of the topics covered in these volumes “ecology” is a modern construct, treated by ancient writers as part of a larger understanding of the human race and the history and future of the earth. Deriving from the Greek oiκoς (house), the modern science explores how organisms (including people) relate to each other and their environment. Here...

Analysis of dental calculus is increasingly important in archaeology, although the focus has hitherto been on dietary reconstruction. Non-edible material has, however, recently been extracted from the dental calculus of a Neanderthal population from the 49 000-year-old site of El Sidrón, Spain, in the form of fibre and chemical compounds that indic...

Significance Pottery has had a central role in human society for many millennia, but the reasons for the emergence and spread of this technology are poorly understood. First invented by groups of hunter–gatherers living in East Asia during the last glacial period, production only began to flourish with rising global temperatures in the Holocene, bu...

The North African region offers up essential data for the study of the origins of the earliest forms of plant exploitation. Data available from several Saharan and coastal areas in the region have revealed that the arrival of domestic wheat and barley from the Levant during the Mid Holocene did not replace the exploitation of autochthonous wild pla...

Reconstructing detailed aspects of the lives of Lower Palaeolithic hominins, who lived during the Middle Pleistocene, is challenging due to the restricted nature of the surviving evidence, predominantly animal bones and stone tools. Qesem Cave, Israel (420e200 ka) is a site that has produced evidence for a wealth of innovative features including co...

Accessing information on plant consumption before the adoption of agriculture is challenging. However, there is growing evidence for use of locally available wild plants from an increasing number of pre-agrarian sites, suggesting broad ecological knowledge. The extraction of chemical compounds and microfossils from dental calculus removed from anci...

Calcified dental plaque (dental calculus) preserves for millennia and entraps biomolecules from all domains of life and viruses. We report the first, to our knowledge, high-resolution taxonomic and protein functional characterization of the ancient oral microbiome and demonstrate that the oral cavity has long served as a reservoir for bacteria impl...

Qarassa 3 (Sweida, Southern Syria) is an open air site that has yielded a series of archaeological evidences attributed to the Natufian period. The remains are located on a basalt hill and the surrounding lowland, in an area adjacent to an ancient lake. The archaeological finds are organized around 12 circular structures located at the top of the v...

Survey and excavation by the Burials and Identity team of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focused in 2011 on the so-called Royal Cemetery of the Garamantes close to the Jarma escarpment, a few km south of Old Jarma. This Late Garamantian cemetery contains two distinct zones (GSC030 and GSC031) of monumental rectangular stepped tombs, which were...

The fourth season of the Burials and Identity component of the Desert Migrations Project in 2010 focused on completion of excavation work at two main cemeteries (TAG001 and TAG012) and smaller-scale sampling work at a number of nearby cemeteries. The investigation of a number of burials in a semi-nucleated escarpment cemetery TAG063 produced intere...

The ‘Burials and Identity’ team of the Desert Migrations Project carried out two main excavations in the 2009 season, at the monumental Garamantian cemeteries of TAG001 and TAG012, by the Taqallit headland. In addition, a detailed survey was made of cemeteries and other sites on the west side of the Taqallit headland, to set the two main cemetery e...

The Desert Migrations Project is a new interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional collaborative project between the Society for Libyan Studies and the Department of Antiquities. The geographical focus of the study is the Fazzan region of southwest Libya and in thematic terms we aim to address the theme of migration in the broadest sense, encompassing...