This October Dr Chiara Messana has joined the archaeozoology team at GIAP-ICAC as part of the project “PASTORA – Feeding the docile and the wild: a study of animal feeding systems in the Roman Iberia through Archaeozoology and Biogeochemistry”, under the supervision of Dr Lídia Colominas.
As part of the project, she will investigate the food management systems used to feed wild and domestic animals in Hispania Tarraconensis between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD, performing bulk carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope analyses on bone collagen.
Chiara completed her PhD in Quaternary and Prehistory at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili – URV (2024) with the thesis entitled “Tales of sheep in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula during the Iron Age (3rd century B.C.): a multi-isotope research”. Her doctoral research was funded by an FI grant (2020-2023) from the AGAUR and was carried out at the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA). Her PhD thesis provided novel insights into the livestock management strategies adopted by Iron Age Iberian communities. The multi-isotope approach made it possible to delineate, for the first time, on a seasonal level and through direct evidence, the in-life management of livestock during the protohistoric period.
Between June 2024 and May 2026, she held a postdoctoral research position within the ERC CoG ‘READ – Revealing Earliest Animal Domestication in the Fertile Crescent’ project at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Her research focused on tracing the earliest evidence of caprine management through stable isotope analyses on Neolithic remains from the Near East.
Her background includes a degree in Archaeological Cultural Heritage (Università degli Studi di Palermo – UNIPA) and a master’s degree in Quaternary, Prehistory and Archaeology (Università degli Studi di Ferrara – UNIFE). Initially trained as an archaeozoologist, her research now focuses on determining human control over livestock management, investigating the historical life traits of archaeological specimens through stable isotope analyses on teeth and bones.
