Gianni Gallello

Biography

Gianni was awarded his PhD in Archaeology in 2014 by the University of Valencia (Spain) majoring in archaeological science. In his dissertation he developed innovative methodological proposals for the study of archaeological soil and human remains, employing novel sampling strategies, Rare Earth Elements, major and trace element analysis and multivariate statistics. The capability to act consistently has helped to provide the support to present new methodological proposals for a set of heterogeneous and diachronic archaeological materials.

Research Interest

A Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie European Fellowship, funded by the European Commission (Horizon2020). The aim of the innovative Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie MATRIX project is to establish a new interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary methodological approach that combines archaeology, chemistry and geology for the identification of anthropogenic deposits in archaeological excavations through rare earth elements (REE) soil analysis, pushing current limitations of traditional chemical and sedimentology techniques. REE are a set of seventeen elements in the periodic table, specifically fifteen lanthanides as well as scandium and yttrium. Crucially, these elements are relatively abundant in the earth’s crust and thanks to their characteristics can be employed as unambiguous markers of soil provenance on archaeological sites worldwide.