Ancient DNA from Punta di Zambrone: Minute Traces of 3000-year-old DNA or ´Much Ado About Nothing`?

Archaeological excavations at Punta di Zambrone (Calabria, Italy) lead to the recovery of severely fragmented human remains in a fortification ditch (Area C). Besides other findings like animal bones and artefacts, the filling of this ditch also contained a large amount of plant ash, indicative of a prolonged period of fire-related processes, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. Comprehensive anthropological investigations were carried out to determine the sex and age as well as the health status of the discarded individuals. Apart from this, a set of methods from forensic anthropology were applied to reconstruct the circumstances of death and related taphonomic processes. The reassociation of skeletal fragments from the ditch revealed a minimum number of two individuals. Most of the bone fragments were assigned to an early adult individual of questionable sex. The remaining fragments could be tentatively assigned to a slightly younger (adolescent) individual. However, for the adolescent individual, the low number of associated bone fragments rendered macroscopic sexing elusive. Dental enamel hypoplasias were present on one premolar, indicating stress-induced perturbation of crown formation during childhood for one of the individuals. In addition, the same individual also displayed new bone formation around the external auditory pore (porus acusticus externus) in the tympanic portion of the temporal bone, suggestive of an inflammatory process affecting the external ear. Remarkably, none of the human bone fragments exhibited burn marks. This finding rules out the possibility of a direct link with the assumed burning event. Taphonomic reconstruction of the excavation site suggests that the remains of at least one of the excavated individuals have undergone multiple disturbances after deposition.