Investigating diet of Nogarole Camponi ( Northern Italy) through carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope analysis of animal bone collagen

Abstract

The archaeological site of Nogarole Camponi is located in Povegliano, south of the city of Verona, Italy. The site consists of a small settlement dated to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (2300 – 950 century BCE) and it is associated with the so-called Terramare culture. In this period, intensive agriculture, husbandry, and pastoralism became central in the subsistence of people living in northern Italy (from the southern slopes of the Alps to the central-eastern Po valley). In particular, the exploitation of secondary products (e.g., milk, wool) became predominant over primary products (e.g., meat), leading to important economic and social changes. Stable isotope analysis of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur of human and animal bone collagen has been applied in the last decades to a variety of archaeological contexts for the reconstruction of past dietary practices. The working principle consists in tracing back the isotopic signal of the specimen analyzed to the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles in nature, which allows discriminating between C3 and C4 plants, as well as producers from consumers and aquatic from terrestrial environments. Recently, scholars have been building up the evidence for diet in Bronze Age northern Italy using stable isotope analysis, with a focus on humans. For example, the introduction and the role of C4 plants (millets) have been outlined in some of these communities. However, the animal assemblage has a marginal role in these studies, used merely as a proxy for the baseline signal. Here we add new evidence for the animal diet in Bronze Age northern Italy by analyzing cattle, sheep, goat, pig and dog remains from Nogarole Camponi, coupling the new data with those previously published and available in the literature. By doing so, we provide a reconstruction of the animal diet and link it back to the environment where they were raised, discussing husbandry practices and consequently, the human diet and economy. Furthermore we present here a database of zooarchaeological isotopic data, which might contribute to better understanding patterns of consumption and environmental background in Bronze Age Italy. By studying the diet of domestic animals from Nogarole Camponi, together with that from other sites of northern Italy, we explore the relationship between humans, the animals and the environment in an important period of major social changes.