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Barbara del Mastro

Curriculum Vitae

Barbara Del Mastro’s archaeological research is multidisciplinary and cross-cuts the traditional divide between humanities and archaeometry. As field archaeologist she has undertaken archaeological excavationsof Prehistorical, Classical and Late Antiquity contexts. She began graduate studies in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Naples “Suor Orsola Benincasa” earning a MA in the 2012 discussing a master thesis entitled “The Northern Periurban Sanctuary of Cumae: the study of impastovessels”. The subject has concerned the typological study of five-hundred fragments of impasto pottery (non-purified clay) carhacterized by fire traces dateble to archaic and late-archaic period belonged to four wells of the northen periurban Greek sanctuary of Cumae (Campany, Italy). This work allowed to identify a group of artefacts (ollae) comparable with some specific Etruscan’s production proving the Cumae’s role as frontier site between Greek and Etruscan cultures.

From 2010 till 2017 she joined as external collaborator the research activities carried out by the Centre Jean Bérardof Naples USR 3133 (CNRS / EFR http://centrejeanberard.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article34&lang=fr) exploring Porta Mediana’s necropolis of Cumae (http://centrejeanberard.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article123; Campany – Italy; Bronze Age – 7th century A.D.) therefore increasing an archaeological funerary skill. From 2013 till 2017 she has participated in activities foreseen by the multidisciplinary ANR-MAGI, in collaboration with The French School of Rome (EFR), the Centre Jean Bérard of Naples USR 3133 (CNRS / EFR), the LNG (Nicolas Garnier Laboratory) and Italian’s Institutions focused on the Archaeology of the organic products. The aim of the Magi, a French acronym of “Eating, drinking and offering in Gaule and pre-Roman Italy”, has been to identify through biochemical analysis the organic substancespresent in trace in archaeological artefacts belonging to funerary contexts of Western, Eastern and Southern France, of Sardinia, Central and South Italy. This trainig has allowed her to obtain a knowledge and practical skills about organic archaeological materials aimed to the interpretation of data issued from biomolecolar analisys and on their conservation and sampling avoiding pollution and degradation phenomena.

In 2017 she achieved the Archaeological Specialization (Italian degree intermediary between Master 2 and PhD, essential for being archaeologist in Italy) in the Department of Archeology at the University of Campany “Luigi Vanvitelli” / University of NaplesSuor Orsola Benincasain join supervision with the University of South Brittany and in collaboration with the Centre Jean Bérardof Naples (CNRS – USR 3133) discussing a thesis entitled “Wine consumption in pre-Hellenic Cuma : the case of four tombs investigated by the Centre Jean Bérard”. This study has concerned the characterization of the organic substances involved in the funerary ritual of the indigenous pre-Hellenic population of Cumae (end of 10th– 8thcentury B.C.) through the biomolecolar analysis crossed with arcaheological, historical, anthropological and botanical data. The results attested the production and consumption of wine among indigenous people lived in Cumaebefore Greeks arrival in Southern Italy, a society that has not returned written source   so known only by and depicted by literature like it had been emancipated by allogenic contribution. Moreover this study has highlightened the historical and anthropological value of “hard” science methods combined with traditional archaeology. The wine is not the only organic substance identified: dairy products were intercepted in the forms of the only female tomb analyzed; a recipe based on millet seems to have been the content of bowls forms; a mixture resembling a medicament or a cosmetic has been identified in the only pyxisdeposited in the female burial; moreover it has been observed that pitch it’s the most common substance present in the analyzed sets, in which it had three functions as coating, to correct wine acidity and as arom. At last, through this multidisciplinary work for the first time a functional study of protohistorical pottery avalaible hitherto only on morpho-typological basis has been renforced by the chemical data.

Publications :

Del Mastro B., Brun J.-P., Munzi P., Garnier N., “Wine before Greeks : the contribution of the organic chemistry analysis”, in Proceedings of 3rd IMEKO International Conference on Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, Lecce, Italy 23 – 25 october 2017, Lecce 2017, pp. 1-7.

http://www.imeko.org/publications/tc4-Archaeo-2017/IMEKO-TC4-ARCHAEO-2017-001.pdf

Del Mastro B., “Sector E72 archaeological excavation dossier”, in MAE-Report of the excavation campaign of the year 2017 carried out by the Centre Jean Bérard of Naples USR 3133 (CNRS – EFR) in Cumae (Naples – Campania) for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, direction of Priscilla Munzi and Jean – Pierre Brun.

Foodstuffs, Dairy products, Fermented beverages, Medicinal and Cosmetic products, Perfumes, Aromatic materials in the Mediterranean and West-European areas. This scientific notebook presents the bioarchaeology research programs of the Temos laboratory (CNRS, UMR 9016).