Zita Laffranchi, Stefania Zingale, Umberto Tecchiati, Alfonsina Amato, Valentina Coia, Alice Paladin, Luciano Salzani, Simon R Thompson, Marzia Bersani, Irene Dori, Sönke Szidat, Sandra Lösch, Jessica Ryan-Despraz, Gabriele Arenz, Albert Zink, Marco Milella
Animal remains are a common find in prehistoric and protohistoric funerary contexts. While taphonomic and osteological data provide insights about the proximate (depositional) factors responsible for these findings, the ultimate cultural causes leading to this observed mortuary behavior are obscured by the opacity of the archaeological record and the lack of written sources. Here, we apply an interdisciplinary suite of analytical approaches (zooarchaeological, anthropological, archaeological, paleogenetic, and isotopic) to explore the funerary deposition of animal remains and the nature of joint human-animal burials at Seminario Vescovile (Verona, Northern Italy 3rd-1st c...
2024: PloS One