Ricerc@Sapienza

The Meroitic Royal District of ancient Napata is located on the flat desert north-east of Jebel Barkal, the celebrated ‘Pure Mountain’ in the Fourth Cataract region. Since the 1970s, the excavations of the Italian Mission in Sudan have unearthed a complex system of palaces, kiosks, and other buildings integrated into a larger ceremonial area dating to the Meroitic period. The focus of the palatial area is Building B1500, the so-called ‘Palace of Natakamani’, a large edifice whose construction dates from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD.

Over the past decade, physical and chemical analyses have been widely applied to the study of rock art contexts, particularly to examine the composition of rock art paintings and for direct radiometric dating. Different sampling and analytical methods have been applied to rock art from different parts of the world. However, in Africa these analyses are still at an embryonic stage. The results are often problematic in terms of reliability, mainly as concerns the chronology.

The study of pigments is of fundamental importance for authentication and restoration purposesof painted artworks. To this aim reflectance spectroscopy has been widely studied on samples and in a number of real cases. A number of valuable efforts have been dedicated to this quest; however,the identification of a pigment on a painting surface by means of reflectance spectroscopy appears to bepossible only in very few casesalso due to the fact that artist materials are often mixed.

A quasi cinquanta anni dalla sua fondazione, la Missione Archeologica Italiana in Sudan – Jebel Barkal raccoglie, in un evento espositivo che si muove tra Roma (sede universitaria della prima direzione della Missione) e Venezia (sede universitaria dell'attuale direzione), reperti che lasciano il Sudan per la prima volta e che provengono dallo scavo dell'antica città di Napata.

Nowadays, practice of tattooing is very common worldwide and, along with this increasing trend, there is also an increased risk of adverse reactions to tattoo pigments that are well known and described in literature. Previous studies have reported that cutaneous and allergic reactions to a particular pigment can manifest in several ways (allergic contact dermatitis and photo-allergic dermatitis).

Fully ripe fruits and mature leaves of Elaeagnus angustifolia were harvested and analyzed by means of analytical and biological tests to better comprehend the chemical composition and therapeutic/nutraceutical potential of this plant. Fruits and leaves were dried and the obtained powders were analyzed to study their color character and (via headspace gas chromatography) describe the chemical profile.

A method using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a photodiode array detector was proposed for the rapid characterization of different phenolic constituents from the extracts of Atriplex mollis aerial parts. Atriplex species are known for their multiple biological activities, but no information is available in the literature about A. mollis. With the aim to firstly characterize the main secondary metabolites of this plant, so as to orient better the biological evaluation, we applied three different extraction procedures and compared the chromatographic results.

This study was performed to evaluate the metabolite recovery from different extraction
methods applied to Thymus algeriensis aerial parts. A high-performance liquid chromatographic
method using photodiode array detector with gradient elution has been developed and validated
for the simultaneous estimation of different phenolic compounds in the extracts and in their
corresponding purified fractions. The experimental results show that microwave-assisted aqueous
extraction for 15 min at 100 C gave the most phenolics-enriched extract, reducing extraction