The project Science @ Tarquinia aims to provide the complementary scientific support for the long-standing study of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia by the University of Milan. This Unesco World Heritage site is well known for its magnificent painted tombs, its city walls, the Temple of Ara Regina and the monumental zone where the University of Milan has worked for over 30 years. The collaborative work (which started in September 2019) includes flotation, micromorphology, AMS dating, isotopic analysis and aDNA. The sedimentary geology of Tarquinia has proved very beneficial in providing good preservation of the chemical signatures, leading to striking new information on the diet, mobility and biological character of the ancient populations of this coastal city. The work is supported by the University of Milan, international funds of the University of Cambridge and the McDonald Institute.

The Tarquinia @ Science project is closely integrated with the E4 Project (comparing Etruria, SW Germany and Denmark in the first millennium BC) of the CRC1266 at the University of Kiel, bringing the following scholars into collaboration: Oliver Nakoinz (Kiel), Cheryl Makarewicz (Kiel), John Meadows (Kiel), Victoria Alliata (Kiel), Camilla Zeviani (Cambridge).

http://www.etruscologia.unimi.it/index.php/progetti/80-progetti/124-tarquinia-project

http://www.etruscologia.unimi.it/index.php/progetti

Recent publication:

Bagnasco, G., Marzullo, M., Cattaneo, C., Biehler-Gomez, L., Mazzarelli, D., Ricciardi, V., Müller, W., Coppa, A., McLaughlin, R., Motta, L., Prato, O., Schmidt, F., Gaveriaux, F., Marras, G. B., Millet, M. A., Madgwick, R., Ballantyne, R., Makarewicz, C. A., Trentacoste, A., Reimer, P., Mattiangeli, V., Bradley, D. G., Malone, C., Esposito, C., Breslin, E. M. & Stoddart, S. 2024. Bioarchaeology aids the cultural understanding of six characters in search of their agency (Tarquinia, ninth–seventh century BC, central Italy). Scientific Reports 14 (1): 11895.