By Georgia Jackson, College of Arts and Sciences
Scholars were wrong about prehistoric Sicily.
Davide Tanasi, a professor at the University of South Florida, has new evidence not only that were horses present on the Mediterranean island earlier than previously thought, but that they also played an important role in the diets of early Bronze Age communities.
Tanasi published his findings - the earliest documented evidence for the presence and consumption of horse meat in early bronze age Sicily - in the peer-reviewed, open access journal PLOS One, challenging the previously held belief that horses weren't present on the island until the beginning of the first millennium B.C.
"Thousands and thousands of pages that have been written now have to be revised and rewritten because we found the missing piece." - Davide Tanasi
The groundbreaking news quickly made its way into the prominent Italian newspaper la Repubblica - as well as onto Tampa's local news station Bay News 9.
"The horse was one of the most transformative animals in ancient civilizations, shaping mobility, warfare, hunting, agriculture, economy and religion," said Tanasi, who is the founder and director of the Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx) at USF. "To prove that the indigenous of Sicily had access to horses 1,000 years before what was traditionally believed has enormous repercussions and substantially alters existing models of horse domestication, utilization and dietary practices."
The findings by Tanasi and his team - which includes Robert Tykot of the Department of Anthropology and Enrico Greco of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment - also enhance historians' understandings of intercultural interactions, ritual behaviors and economic strategies in the central Mediterranean during the third millennium B.C.
"The vast majority of the materials retrieved were pottery fragments from cooking ware and table ware," Tanasi said. "Footed vessels, pitchers and cups."
In other words, objects typical of prehistoric libation rituals.
"The pottery assemblage contained a very large pedestal basin that, very likely, was at the center of the communal rite. It must have contained horse meat-based foodstuff, possibly in the form of a stew. Participants to the ritual took portions into smaller bowls, from which they consumed it," Tanasi said. "We can't say what happened during the rituals, but ethnographic studies inform us that prayer, chants and dances may have been performed."
The team also uncovered a large, terracotta phallus, suggesting, to Tanasi, that the site was used for repeated performances intended to invoke fertility.
Tanasi's excavation of the site, located near the base of Sicily's Polizzello mountain, took place in 2005; however, archaeological technology was not sufficiently advanced at the time to identify the organic residue on the pottery fragments.
Tanasi excavated the site, located near the base of Sicily's Polizzello mountain, in 2005.
Despite his tremendous curiosity, Tanasi decided to wait, pouring his time and energy into other projects, including the discovery of prehistoric wine in the dangerous underground complex of Monte Kronio and physical evidence of hallucinogens in a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mug.
In 2024, Tanasi retrieved the pottery samples from storage and brought them to the IDEx lab at USF, where he could leverage the new technologies at his disposal.
"The proteomic analysis of the organic residues revealed a clear biomolecular signature of horse products in a substantial subset of the vessels," Tanasi said.
Most prominent was the presence of equine serum albumin, a major blood protein found in horses.
"Thousands and thousands of pages that have been written now have to be revised and rewritten because we found the missing piece," Tanasi told Bay News 9.
Learn more about the Institute for Digital Exploration at USF.
