Cinnabar is a natural mercury sulfide (HgS) mineral mined from the ancient past for use as a red pigment for body paint and ceramics, in jewellery-making and in medicinal treatments. Mercury from cinnabar can be absorbed by ingestion and through the skin and can accumulate in bones. Mass-selective neutron spectroscopy on VESUVIO will be applied to study the level of mercury in human bones from the Spaccasasso cave on the Uccellina Mountains (Alberese Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy). The site dates back from the late-4th to early-3rd millennium BC, and after mining exploitation it was used for funerary practices. Several archaeological questions regarding the buried individuals are still unanswered: were these populations engaged in mining or not? Detection of mercury and its stable isotopes may help to elucidate these archaeological queries.