In August, Frankie Tait (PhD student) attended the 11th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology (ISBA) located in Turin, Italy. This iteration was held across two venues – the Aldo Moro building and the Musei Reali di Torino (pictured below), and included pre-conference meetings for many of the affiliate societies: PAASTA, SPAAM, HAAM, LAARD and AARC. Frankie attended the relevant PAASTA meet, which is a community for techniques in palaeoproteomics and archaeology and enjoyed an afternoon of engaging talks from fellow members before the registration and opening ceremony of ISBA11.
The ISBA programme covered exciting talks involving ancient DNA, sedaDNA, metabolomics, isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating, palaeoproteomics as well as projects integrating more than one of these disciplines. This year saw an increase in sessions presenting palaeoproteomic techniques, including an invited talk from Enrico Cappellini – ‘Palaeoproteomics: what’s going on and what’s next’ highlighting the field’s progression within the ancient biomolecular community. The programme also had a heavy focus on ethics with many featured talks and the opportunity to take part in a round table discussion on ethical sampling from museums and academic feudalism.
Frankie presented a five minute ‘espresso talk’ and a poster as part of the Integrating ancient biomolecules and archaeological session. The presentations highlighted new radiocarbon dates and ZooMS results from a pilot study undertaken at the cave site of Cioarei Boroșteni in Romania as part of the COEXIST project.
