Study of chronic mercury exposure in ancient populations from the cinnabar mining.

Cinnabar is a natural mercury sulfide (HgS) mineral mined from the ancient past for use as a red pigment for body paint and ceramics, in jewellery-making and in medicinal treatments. Mercury from cinnabar can be absorbed by ingestion and through the skin and can accumulate in bones. Mass-selective neutron spectroscopy on VESUVIO will be applied to study the level of mercury in human bones from the Spaccasasso cave on the Uccellina Mountains (Alberese – Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy). The site dates back from the late-4th to early-3rd millennium BC, and after mining exploitation it was used for funerary practices. Several archaeological questions regarding the buried individuals are still unanswered: were these populations engaged in mining or not? Detection of mercury and its stable isotopes may help to elucidate these archaeological queries.