Heart of darkness: an interdisciplinary investigation of the urban anthropic deposits of the Baptistery of Padua (Italy)

Archeological excavations beside the Baptistery of the Dome of Padua (north-eastern Italy) unearthed anthropic deposits formedbetween the seventh- and tenth-centuryAD. These were analyzed using soil micromorphology, soil chemical analyses (especiallyaimed at the definition of organic matter properties and dynamics), and GC/MS analyses of fecal biomarkers, the latter corrob-orated by principal component analysis. This inter-disciplinary study allowed differentiating between units resulting from in situaccumulation of trampled domestic waste and other, more frequent, units derived from repeated dumping or backfilling episodes.Fast accumulation of organic-rich domestic waste, coupled with an incomplete evolution of organic molecules appears as a fundamental formation process of these anthropic deposits. The overall level of fecal contamination in the Padua Baptistery sediments proved to be very low or absent.