Elemental, immunochemical and Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) analyses to characterize diagenetic alteration patterns and map collagen in ancient skeletal remains

Elemental, immunochemical and Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) analyses to characterize diagenetic alteration patterns and map collagen in ancient skeletal remains”.

Chemiluminescent (CL) immunochemical imaging analysis has been applied for the first time for collagen localization in bones and teeth from various archaeological contexts, chronological periods, and characterized by different collagen content. Then, Laser Ablation–Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS) and CL imaging were combined to investigate the correlation between elemental (i.e., REE, U, Sr, Ba) and collagen distribution.

Immunochemical analysis revealed a heterogeneous distribution of collagen, especially in highly degraded samples. Subsequently, LA–ICP–MS showed a correlation between the presences of uranium and rare earth elements and areas with low amount of collagen. The innovative integration between the two methods permitted to clarify the mutual relation between elemental variation and collagen preservation overtime, thus contributing to unravel the effects of diagenetic alteration in bones and teeth.

Moreover, an innovative and highly efficient near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) method is proposed to provide spectral maps able to reveal collagen distribution in large-size bones, also offering semi-quantitative estimations. The developed approach addresses an urgent issue of the analytical chemistry applied to bioarcheology researches, which rely on well-preserved collagen in bones to obtain key information on chronology, paleoecology and taxonomy.

NIR-HSI pre-screening allows researchers to properly select the sampling points for subsequent specific analyses, to minimize costs and time and to preserve integrity of archaeological bones (which are available in a very limited amount), providing further opportunities to understand our past.

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