The study of metallic and non-metallic elements in archaeological, geological and forensic materials can be used to tackle several sets of problems, such as the following ones.

Identification of biological contents in bones

The concentrations of trace elements in bones are used to clarify problems which regard diet, paleopatology, taphonomic processes and forensic instances. Natural and diagenetic contamination can lead to misintrepretations (Hinz E. A. Kohn M. J., 2010; Tütken and Vennemann 2011) that can be verified through the analysis of distant and close soils, by using analytical data and statistics tools (Gallello et al., 2013a). Moreover, data about samples which come from a stratigraphic unit can help to distinguish element's concentrations conditioned by taphonomic processes that develop indipendently from the context (Gallello et al., 2014a).

Determination of anthropic impact through soil's inorganic analysis

Soil's chemical analysis is used to obtain information about natural phenomena and human activities which interested ancient sites (Gallello et al., 2013b, 2014b). These techniques are highly developed and can help to understand the origin of the sediments and the history of their transportation when other methos (e.g.: granulometric analysis) are not enough due to the homogeneity of the soils. Trace elements and, in particular, Rare Earth Elements (REE) are very useful to identify anthropogenic samples due to the chemical features of these elements, such as their strong particle fraction, their coherent behaviour during the weathering and fluvial transportation, and their high resistance to mobilisation cause by chemical agents (McLennan, 1992; McLennan y Taylor, 1980; Munksgaard et al., 2003; Zhangdog et al., 2006). Our data shows that REE are good marker for stratigraphic units originated by different causes.

Provenance analysis of archaeological materials

Chemical analysis of lithic, lithoid and metallic artifacts permits to understand the territorial behaviour of communities, the technology of the ancient tools and materials, and the interactions and trades among different populations (Bevins et al. 2012; Olofsson, 2011).