Isotope evidence suggests non-Greek soldiers aided Greeks at Himera 480

[Duncan Head]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277380-isotope-study-hints-ancient-greeks-used-foreign-fighters-in-key-battle/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248803

Isotope evidence from tooth enamel of bodies in the mass graves believed to be of Sicilian Greek war-dead from 480 suggest that in fact many came from all round the Mediterranean and perhaps even the Back Sea. The authors suggest that this may represent hiring of mercenaries from outside Sicily, who are not mentioned in the historical accounts of the battle. What they do not seem to consider is the possibility that some or all of these non-Sicilians might represent slaves, perhaps slave attendants of hoplites and/or slaves conscripted as light troops.

[Duncan Head]

For the literary sources for Himera, of course, see http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=250.0

[Jim Webster]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277380-isotope-study-hints-ancient-greeks-used-foreign-fighters-in-key-battle/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248803

Isotope evidence from tooth enamel of bodies in the mass graves believed to be of Sicilian Greek war-dead from 480 suggest that in fact many came from all round the Mediterranean and perhaps even the Back Sea. The authors suggest that this may represent hiring of mercenaries from outside Sicily, who are not mentioned in the historical accounts of the battle. What they do not seem to consider is the possibility that some or all of these non-Sicilians might represent slaves, perhaps slave attendants of hoplites and/or slaves conscripted as light troops.

Also Gelon may have used more cosmopolitan array of mercenaries that we think, we know his 10,000 were Sicels and Greeks
There could have been Iberians etc in among those.
But also well paid mercenary hoplites would have had slave attendants, and I suspect you could buy slaves from all over the western Med in Syracus

[DBS]

There is also the little matter of the ancient claims and beliefs on the original ethnicity of the inhabitants, eg Strabo:

"The Greeks suffered none of the barbarians to approach the shore, although they were not able to expel them entirely from the interior, for the Siculi, Sicani, Morgetes, and some others, still inhabit the island to the present day, amongst whom also were the Iberians, who, as Ephorus relates, were the first of the barbarians that are considered to have been settlers in Sicily. "

Or Thucydides:

"The Sicanians appear to have been the next settlers, although they pretend to have been the first of all and aborigines; but the facts show that they were Iberians, driven by the Ligurians from the river Sicanus in Iberia. It was from them that the island, before called Trinacria, took its name of Sicania, and to the present day they inhabit the west of Sicily."

Now, I appreciate that isotope analysis, unlike genes, should be an indicator of where the individual in question was born/raised, rather than from where their ancestors hailed, but it could be that the claims outlined above reflect a certain degree of movement and common ethnicity...  Equally, the Greeks had a fair few interests in the Black Sea, and it is not impossible that someone could come from there and still regard himself (and be regarded by others) as Greek.

[Jim Webster]

I went back to the article about the graves

https://conservation-science.unibo.it/article/view/7115/6826

As well as men, they buried over 30 horses. Whilst the dead were laid out with reasonable respect I wonder if it was slaves being commanded to do battlefield clearance and get rid of the bodies because there was a problem of disease.
The excavation article doesn't call them Greeks but "graves of soldiers who died in battle in 480 B.C."

I would suggest that's what they were and perhaps men of both armies were buried together?