stable isotope analysis (Other Keyword)
76-99 (99 Records)
Casas Grandes, also known as Paquimé, was one of the largest and most complex societies in prehistoric northern Mexico, with established trade networks and social influences from Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and western Mexico. Analyses of the human skeletal remains from Casas Grandes have found evidence for interpersonal conflict, human sacrifice, and cannibalism during the Medio period (ca. 1200-1450 AD), which coincides with increasing sociopolitical complexity and emerging social...
Rural Life during and after the Fall of the Wari Empire: A Stable Isotope Analysis of Childhood Diet and Geographical Origins at the Village of Qasa Pampa, Ayacucho, Peru (2017)
Life in a rural village can be vastly different from life in the metropolis, and when an empire collapses the effects can reach even the smallest village. For Qasa Pampa, an agricultural village that was occupied in Wari (ca. 650 – 850 CE) and post-Wari (ca. 1000 – 1200 CE) times and located several kilometers away from the capital of Huari, life for its population may have been quite distinct from their capital counterparts. Stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis can shed light on the...
The Sepulchral Symbolism and Workshop Comparison of the Raptus of the Sabines Sarcophagus and the Metilia Acte Sarcophagus (2013)
International Journal of Archaeology Fred A. White, The Sepulchral Symbolism and Workshop Comparison of the Raptus of the Sabines Sarcophagus and the Metilia Acte Sarcophagus, International Journal of Archaeology. Vol. 3, No. 1, 2015, pp. 1-7. doi: 10.11648/j.ija.20150301.11 The sarcophagus illustrating the story of the Sabine Women is believed to have been obtained in Rome between 1900 and 1904 by Alfred Emerson, Professor and Chair of Classical Archaeology at Cornell University and the...
Shellfish and Nutrition in San Francisco Bay: Clues from Seasonality Studies (2015)
Shells are especially visible in the archaeological record of Central California. They comprise much of the midden in the large shellmounds that once lined San Francisco Bay. However, shells are also present in many inland sites, though they were collected from the Bay and hauled many kilometers inland. Seasonality reconstructions using oxygen stable isotopes show that shells on the Bay were typically harvested in two seasons, winter and summer, but inland sites contain shells from just winter....
Social Inequality in the Middle-Late Neolithic? Stable Isotope Analysis of the Individuals from Beli Manastir-Popova Zemlja (Slavonia, Croatia) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beli Manastir (Slavonia, Croatia) is the largest Middle-Late Neolithic habitation site discovered in Croatia. A total of 37 individuals were found in different burial positions and different areas of this site, and sometimes within burial clusters, with only 3 individuals buried with abundant grave goods. The burials were, in most cases, placed between or...
Stable Isotope Analysis (δ13C/δ15N) of Archaeological Feathers from Corral Redondo, Arequipa, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Feathercrafts were vital to prestige economies of the ancient Americas. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms and sources of feathered textile production can illuminate the nature of the trade networks that supported elite socioeconomic pursuits. In the 1940s, local farmers discovered an unprecedented cache of feathered textile panels wrapped in...
Stable Isotope Analysis Applied to the Reconstruction of Paleoenvironment and Landscape Use during the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic at Üçağızlı I and II, South-Central Turkey (2018)
Stable isotope analysis of δ13C and δ18O in herbivore tooth enamel from the archaeological sites of Üçağızlı I and II in south-central Turkey is used to explore human responses to environmental change during MIS 3 in the eastern Mediterranean. Although changes through time in local ambient moisture are associated with changes in the local animal communities, they generally do not correlate with proxies for site occupation intensity, and thus do not indicate depopulation or shorter site stays...
Stable isotope analysis of animal diets at the Postclassic regional capital of Mayapan (2017)
Subsistence economies during the Postclassic Period (ca. AD 1000-1524) in the northern Maya lowlands were shaped by a range of strategies that included agriculture, the cultivation of wild plants, hunting, trade and market exchange, and the management of animals. Stable isotope data from archaeological faunal remains offer important dietary information to reconstruct the subsistence strategies during this period. In this paper, we present paleodietary data from faunal remains recovered from...
Stable Isotope Analysis of the San Pedro and Cienega Phases at the La Playa Site (SON: F: 10: 3), Sonora, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous stable isotopic studies of bone from 12 dated individuals from the site of La Playa in Northern Sonora suggest a diet dominated by C4 and CAM resources. For collagen δ13C, an average value of -8.5‰ (n=5) was recorded in the San Pedro phase (1200 BC to 800 BC) which shifted to an average value of -10.0‰ (n=7) in the Cienega phase (800 BC to AD 150)....
Stable Isotope Measurements of Weaning Age and Early Childhood Diet in the Ancient Andes: Variation in Early Life Experiences in Tiwanaku Society (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding the complex roles and meanings of breastfeeding practices and childhood provisioning may help bioarchaeologists contextualize paleodietary studies and the role of foodways in the construction and maintenance of social identities. Here, we employ stable isotope measurements (δ15N and δ13C) of weaning age and early childhood diet derived from...
Stable Isotopes From The Stables: An Exploration Of Agricultural And Livestock Management Systems In 17th and 18th Century Virginia (2022)
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...
Theoretical Frameworks for Isotope Data Collection and Interpretation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Intersection of Archaeological Science and Forensic Science" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation describes the theoretical frameworks for isotope data collection and interpretation that will help archaeological scientists ensure their contributions to forensic investigations are scientifically sound and legally defensible. Archaeological science is now commonly used in forensic settings to reconstruct...
"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...
A Zoontological Approach for Examining the Role of Animals in Ancestral Maya Ritual and Society (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals played a fundamental role in mythology and religion among the ancestral Maya. Iconography often depicts animals, including humans dressed as animals, taking part in feasts and ceremonial performances. Archaeologically, the remains of these important animals are recovered from ritual contexts such as burials, altars, caches, and other special...