Isotopic insights from carpological remains: One of the first datasets for the Italian Bronze age

Even though agriculture already spread into Eurasia during the Neolithic, the transition between the Copper Age and the Bronze Age was the time where Italian communities tuned horticultural techniques to foster the soil productivity. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses could be leveraged to identify some of those practices, such as manuring and irrigation. The former could spike the nitrogen values of plants, while water availability affects the carbon values. This work provides one of the first datasets of isotopic data for seeds from four Bronze Age Italian sites spanning overall from the end of the 3rd millennium to the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE: pile-dwelling of Ledro (TN, Trentino Alto Adige), settlement of S. Maria in Belverde (SI, Tuscany), Grotta Nuova (VT, Latium), and Grotta di Pastena (FR, Latium). One-hundred eighty seeds were first classified, then carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis were carried out for broad beans, wheat, emmer and barley. The obtained values were compared to predictive models to enhance the understanding of the agricultural efforts for each community. The provided dataset would be beneficial for future research on agricultural practices, subsistence strategies identification, and even local ecological reconstruction, as it represents one of the most extensive surveys for carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes values for plants in the focused time span.