Jorune Sakalauskaite

“Paleo-shellomics”: biomolecular identification of prehistoric shell ornaments

Jorune Sakalauskaite§; Beatrice Demarchi§; Frédéric Marin#

§ Life Sciences and Systems Biology, Vis Accademia Albertina, 13, 10123 Torino (Italy); # Biogéosciences, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon (France)

Mollusc shells are one of the most widespread and iconic raw materials used in prehistory to make ornaments. The selection of certain species and the ornaments’ typology can be used as proxies for reconstructing patterns of cultural diversity, cohesiveness of local communities and socio-environmental change in past societies.

However, taxonomic identification of shell ornaments among prehistoric artefacts remains challenging: many of those found in archeological sites rarely retain diagnostic morphological features due to working the materials and/or degradation during burial.

We present preliminary paleoproteomics data obtained on the intra-crystalline fraction of marine and freshwater mollusc shells (including the iconic thorny oyster, Spondylus) as well as on shell ornaments from Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeological sites in central and northern Europe. The main challenge of “paleo-shellomics” lies in the characterisation of the proteomes, due to the near absence of genomic datasets for mollusc shells and the phylogenetic diversity and complex evolutionary history of these organisms. We discuss different approaches to data analysis that we have attempted in order to overcome some of these issues. Our results shed new light on the patterns of exploitation of the local environment by prehistoric humans and on the spread of ideas and material culture at the transition between Mesolithic and Neolithic.