Abstract
Near infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetry have been coupled with chemometric exploratory methods in order to investigate ancient (pre-Roman/Roman) human bones from two different necropolises in Central-South Italy (Cavo degli Zucchi and Elea Velia). These findings have been investigated by principal component analysis and they have also been compared with ancient human bones from two Sudanese necropolises (Saggai and Geili). Samples coming from African and European necropolises, mainly differ in two aspects: the burial procedures and their historical period. The ritual applied in the European region involved cremation, while the one applied in the African necropolises did not. Bones from Italian sites (Cavo degli Zucchi and Elea Velia) are Pre-Roman/Roman while the others (from middle Nile) come from the Prehistoric, Meroitic, and Christian Sudanese age. Near infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric measures have been analysed either individually or by a mid-level data-fusion approach. Principal component analysis of the near infrared spectroscopy data allowed differentiation between burnt and unburnt samples, while from the scores plots extracted from the principal component analysis model based on the entire derived thermograms, it was possible to recognize the different clusters related to the various dating of samples. The data-fusion analysis led to considerations similar to those obtained from the model based on thermogravimetry data. Finally, instead of inspecting the entire thermogravimetry curves, principal component analysis was carried out on carbonates, total collagen and water losses only. In this case, the data-fusion approach has led to extremely interesting results; in fact, this model clearly shows that samples group in separate clusters in agreement with their age and the different burial rituals.
© 2018 The Author(s)
PDF Article
More Like This
Development of multi-directional functional near-infrared spectroscopy system for human neuroimaging studies
Takeaki Shimokawa, Toshihiro Ishii, Yoichiro Takahashi, Yuki Mitani, Hironobu Mifune, Sunao Chubachi, Masaki Satoh, Yoshihiro Oba, Kazuhiko Adachi, Satoru Sugawara, and Okito Yamashita
Biomed. Opt. Express 10(3) 1393-1404 (2019)
Cited By
You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.
Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription