23 July 2021
AperTO - Archivio Istituzionale Open Access dell'Università di Torino
Original Citation:
Taxonomic identification of prehistoric ornaments: shells and other biominerals
Terms of use:
Open Access
(Article begins on next page)
Anyone can freely access the full text of works made available as "Open Access". Works made available under a
Creative Commons license can be used according to the terms and conditions of said license. Use of all other works
requires consent of the right holder (author or publisher) if not exempted from copyright protection by the applicable law.
Availability:
This is a pre print version of the following article:
Taxonomic identification of prehistoric ornaments: shells and other biominerals B Demarchi*, J Wilson, K Penkman, M Collins
Often traded, shells were important prestige items in prehistory: perforated marine shells were used in the Palaeolithic, and are found in sites hundreds of kilometres away from the coast. More refined “shell-smithing” techniques appeared in the Neolithic, when Europe was criss-crossed by a network of long-distance trade of jewellery (beads, bracelets, pendants). Reconstructing the shells’ origins and subsequent transport routes when the shells are worked and the morphological features lost is very difficult. As theories of prehistoric exchange networks are founded on the “prestige shells” trade, taxonomic identification of the raw material is key. Worked shell (and eggshell) “jewellery” can be identified using a multi-disciplinary approach based on non-destructive imaging and mineralogical analyses, micro-destructive proteomics (ZooMS) and amino acid analyses (AAR), which exploit the fossil proteins trapped in shells as a taxonomic barcode. When this approach is applied routinely to the rich archaeological record of personal ornaments in Europe and elsewhere, it can lead to re-thinking some of the accepted paradigms and current theories on cross-cultural exchanges.
