stable isotope analysis (Other Keyword)
76-87 (87 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Over the course of British settlement in Tidewater Virginia, colonists were challenged to adapt European farming and husbandry practices to suit the environment of the New World. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, these practices continually evolved as Virginia shifted from a tobacco- to wheat-based agricultural system. In...
Stable Isotopic Analysis of Chinese Domestic Animal Bones from the Central Pacific Railroad Community of Terrace, Box Elder County, Utah (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Analysis of stable isotopes in bone collagen has been widely used to determine diet in humans and other vertebrates. The methods are well established in theory and practice. This exploratory project is focused on pig and cattle bones collected from Chinese and European American surface contexts at Terrace (42BO547) to obtain δ13C and δ15N isotopic signatures. Comparison with isotopic...
Testing the Efficacy of Sulfur Isotopes from the Maya Site of Chulub (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of carbon (13C/12C) and nitrogen (15N/14N) are often used to reconstruct ancient Maya diets. While these two isotopes provide us with a broad understanding of past subsistence practices, carbon and nitrogen are limited in their ability to differentiate freshwater and terrestrial based diets. Similar problems exist in other areas of the...
"They are one with the Tides of the Sea": Diets of Settlers and Sailors in Newfoundland during the 17th to 19th centuries (2016)
From the mid 17th to early 19th centuries the lucrative cod fishery drew sailors and settlers from the British Isles and continental Europe to the shores of Newfoundland. Poor agricultural prospects and a dependence on imports challenged permanent settlement; as a result, the life- and foodways of these early ‘Newfoundlanders’ differed from those that developed at other North American colonial settlements. Through palaeodietary analysis, we investigate the different subsistence-based adaptive...
Tracking Individual Raptors in the Archaeological Record Using Stable Isotope Analysis: Some Implications for the Study of Ritual Economies in New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster, we explore a cost-effective method for tracking artifacts made from individual raptors (or birds of prey) through the use of intra-skeletal variation in δ13C, δ15N, δ2H in modern samples of Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) and Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos). Current methods of quantification in zooarchaeology, such as the minimum number of...
Tracking Individual Raptors in the Archaeological Record Using Stable Isotopes: Limitations, Possibilities, and Causes of Intraskeletal δ-Value Variation (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Birds in Archaeology: New Approaches to Understanding the Diverse Roles of Birds in the Past" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ability to track trade of socially valued goods made from raptor bones can give archaeologists a deeper understanding of both human-raptor interactions and networks of exchange. Reconstructing distribution of such goods from production centers, however, requires the ability to identify bones...
Travelling across the Atacama Desert: New Evidence for Human Mobility in Northern Chile Based on Oxygen and Strontium Isotopes (2018)
The study of human mobility is key to understanding the social and cultural dynamics of the pre-Columbian groups that inhabited northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Material culture suggests that during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1450) individuals frequently crossed the desert from the coast to the Andes and vice versa. Fish remains have been found in the interior valleys, and inland textiles and crops at the coast. This paper explores mobility in northern Chile through the application of...
Using Stable Isotope Analysis to Demonstrate Humans' Role in Faunal Diet Construction at the Collier Lodge Site (12PR36) (2016)
Previous research on the faunal assemblage recovered from the Collier Lodge site (12PR36) centered on the presence and absence of taxa to reconstruct a possible diet breadth for inhabitants of this historic Indiana site. However, the focus of this year’s research is the inferences drawn from stable isotope analysis of said assemblage; specifically, the ratio of 12C to 13C and 15N to 14N. The former provides insights into the source of carbon obtained through diet, while the latter gives clues to...
Using stable isotopes to explore ancient wildebeest mobility in the context of pastoral expansion (2017)
The spread of pastoralism through Kenya may have been slowed by novel disease challenges presented to livestock by wild taxa. In particular, wildebeest-derived malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF), which is extremely fatal to cattle, would have been encountered by pastoralists for the first time as they moved south of the Lake Turkana Basin into the native range of East African wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus). Today, migratory wildebeest have well-known annual migration patterns. However, while...
What Did the Sacrificed Subjects Eat? A Stable Isotope Study of Individuals Sacrificed by the Aztecs during the Late Postclassic period (2016)
This poster introduces my doctoral research project which entails a stable isotope analysis of human sacrificial subjects recovered from the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan and its sister city Tlatelolco (present-day Mexico City) dating to the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1400 — 1519). The collections include adult and subadult sacrificed individuals from the Templo Mayor and Templo R. This research focuses on expanding our knowledge about dietary and mobility patterns of sacrificial...
What Late Formative Period and Modern Jackrabbits (*Lepus californicus) Tell Us about Climate Change in the Southeastern Southwest (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster documents the environmental conditions of the Tularosa Basin/Hueco Bolson during the Doña Ana and El Paso phases (AD 1000–1450) in the Jornada Mogollon Region of the US Southwest by comparing stable carbon isotope values of black-tailed jackrabbits (*Lepus californicus) from archaeological sites to modern...
Why Screen-Size Matters for Isotopic Analysis of Archaeological Faunal Remains: A Case Study from Norton Sound, Alaska (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Saffron cod (Eleginus gracilis) are small nearshore fish distributed throughout the Pacific and Arctic oceans and were a staple to preindustrial Indigenous fisheries of Western Alaska. Fish, mammal, and bird-bone were sampled for carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from sites in Norton Sound, Alaska, spanning 2500 BCE–1850 CE. Comparing our...