From the availability of metals to the technology and tools needed to transform them, roughly every civilization in the Mediterranean basin has a metalsmith story. Many of the objects produced by them share a few peculiar characteristics, usages, or even shapes. In this scenario, a class of objects that can be clustered by their usage, i.e., working tools, stands out from the crowd. For this study, a set of working tools from the Nuragic civilization (Sardinia, Italy) was researched with a non-destructive technique: X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). A quantification of the chemical species present in their alloy was obtained with the use of Monte Carlo simulations. The XRMC package, used for the simulations, managed for the first time to reproduce very complex corrosion layers and to thoroughly characterize them from a chemical perspective. The obtained results were discussed and compared to other results reported in the literature.

The grapevine was one of the earliest domesticated fruit crops and has been cultivated since ancient times. It is considered one of the most important fruit crops worldwide for wine and table grape production. The current grape varieties are the outcome of prolonged selection initiated during the domestication process of their wild relative. Recent genetic studies have shed light on the origins of the modern domestic grapevine in western Europe, suggesting that its origin stems from the introgression between eastern domestic grapes and western wild grapes. However, the origin of ancient grapevines remains largely unexplored. In this study, we conducted an extensive analysis of 2228 well-preserved waterlogged archaeological grape pips from two sites in Sardinia (Italy), dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1300–1100 BC) and the Iron Age (4th and 3rd centuries BC). Using morphometrics and linear discriminant analyses, we compared the archaeological grape pips with modern reference collections to differentiate between wild and domestic grape types and to investigate similarities with 330 modern cultivars. Grape pips from the Late Bronze Age displayed a high percentage of similarity with domesticated grapevines, with a small percentage assigned to wild ones, while the majority of grape pips from the Iron Age were classified as domestic. Discriminant analyses revealed that both white and red grape varieties were cultivated during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, suggesting a high level of diversification in grape cultivation. Furthermore, a high percentage of archaeological grape pips from both periods showed strong similarities with modern cultivars from the Caucasus and Balkans. This suggests that the great diversity of grapevines present in Sardinia could result from interbreeding between western Asian cultivars and local grapevines that began in the Late Bronze Age. Additionally, a substantial proportion of archaeological grape pips exhibited similar morphometric characteristics to two important Mediterranean grape cultivars: “Muscat à petits grains blancs” and “Garnacha”.