strontium (Other Keyword)
1-14 (14 Records)
Following the 1991-1992 excavation of the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds Cemetery (1878-1925), up to 190 individuals were preliminarily identified using historical documentation, material culture, and geospatial analysis. Subsequent bioarchaeological analyses have provided an additional line of evidence for the identification of these individuals. The cemetery population of Western European immigrants and local/nonlocal native born Americans is composed of paupers, the institutionalized,...
Approaches to Sample Selection for Strontium Isotope Testing Within Historic Cemetery Contexts: An Illustrative Example from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Project (2017)
Strontium isotope analyses have become a vibrant frontier for historic cemetery research in the United States. Isotopic analyses can make vital contributions to our understanding of the past, particularly in the categories of demographics, temporal refinements, and individual identifications. This analytical method can be understood as a catalyst for research- similar to a catalyst in a chemical reaction. When utilized in combination with multiple lines of evidence, strontium analyses become a...
Assessing Mobility Among the Medieval Makurian Individuals Interred in Crypts 1–3 on Kom H at Old Dongola, Sudan (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As the capital of the medieval Kingdom of Makuria, in what is today Sudan, Old Dongola was a central location of administration and culture; Old Dongola was also the seat of a bishopric. Such factors would have made Old Dongola a key location for mobility, with various pull factors from economic, social, and religious, including monastic. Numerous...
Connecting the Baseline: Applying Radiogenic Strontium (87Sr/86Sr) Isotopes to Irish Archaeological Research (2016)
In Ireland, in the last decade we have seen a proliferation of isotopic studies in Irish bioarchaeology addressing questions such as paleodiet and paleomobility patterns spanning from the Neolithic to Post-Medieval periods. The Irish Isotope Research Group (IIRG), an innovative multidisciplinary group, was set up to tackle some of the limitations in this field of research in Ireland. A comprehensive strontium isotopic baseline has been established in order to better understand the processes...
Crossing Borders: What Isotope Geochemistry Reveals about Migration among the Maya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Present day conversations about migration focus on borders and limiting population movement with the presence of police, harsh regulations, and walls. This paper examines the concept of migration in the Maya region and what the past decade of isotope geochemistry research tells...
Investigating the Residential History of the Esplanada Mass Graves at Phaleron, Greece (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Bioarchaeology of the Phaleron Cemetery, Archaic Greece: Current Research and Insights" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cemeteries are spaces in which social and political identities are publicly negotiated between the living and the dead. Three mass graves, termed the “Esplanada,” at the Phaleron cemetery, Greece, are a clear and public statement that has captured significant attention since they were first...
The Isotope Bioarcheology of the Transatlantic Slave Trade - How New Strontium Isoscapes Inform on Individual African Origins and Life Histories (2024)
For two decades, isotope biogeochemistry has allowed for the identification of first generation victims of the transatlantic slave trade in the Americas based on highly radiogenic strontium isotope ratios discovered in archaeological human remains from slavery contexts. However, as strontium isotope baseline data from most of Africa was absent these high strontium ratios were merely linked to sub-Saharan Africa at large, with little to no possibility of nuance regarding the actual regions...
Patterns and Outliers in Prehistoric Island Mobility: Comparing the Strontium Data (2017)
During the colonisation of islands in the Pacific and Caribbean by agropastoral communities, a variety of proxies (e.g., material, genetic, zoogeographic) indicate substantial inter-island and inter-community contact. It has been suggested that this contact represents an adaptive response to intrinsic demographic fragility during the initial phases of island colonisation, and that this connectivity imperative faded in the aftermath of initial dispersal as overall population density increased....
Six Impossible Things before Breakfast: Understanding Space and Place at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2018)
From 1878 through 1974 Milwaukee County utilized four locations on the Milwaukee County Grounds for burial of more than 7,000 individuals, primarily paupers, the institutionalized, and the unidentified. Two archaeological excavations in 1991 and 1992 and again in 2013 resulted in the recovery of over 2,400 individuals from one of those cemetery locations. A comprehensive understanding of the spatial organization and use life of this site has been complicated by the cemetery’s history of...
South Texas Archaic Hunter-Gatherer Mobility Patterns: A Study using Strontium Isotope Analysis (2016)
Strontium isotope ratios from human enamel can be used to estimate the general origin of individuals and are becoming an important tool in archaeology for studying human mobility. This presentation will illustrate the results of a pilot study looking at mobility patterns for south Texas Archaic period hunter-gatherers using strontium isotope analysis. Six human teeth from the south Texas mortuary site of Loma Sandia, dating to about 2850-2550 years ago, were used in this study. Three of the...
Steppes Across the Land: Reconstructions of Steppe Bison Mobility Patterns in East-Central Alaska through Isotopic Analyses and Implications for Prehistoric Human Behavior (2016)
Steppe bison (Bison priscus) were an important species for interior Alaskan subsistence economies during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, but the locations of preferred bison habitat areas, seasonal movement patterns, responses to environmental change, and other behavioral factors remain largely unexplored in Alaskan archaeology. This study applies strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotopic analyses to 14 sequentially-sampled and AMS radiocarbon dated steppe bison teeth from two locales in...
Strontium isotope evidence for Late Neolithic mobility in South-Central Portugal (2016)
During the end of the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE (Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic) in South-Central Portugal significant movement of people has been assumed due to the widespread distribution of ‘foreign’ artefacts found at coastal and inland archaeological sites. Counter to this, other archaeological evidence from the region seems to suggest a more sedentary lifestyle among these people at that time. Here we will present human strontium isotope data from three Late Neolithic tombs, namely the...
Strontium Isotope Values for Early Colonial Cows at San Bernabe, A Spanish Mission in the Peten Lakes Region of Guatemala (2016)
The earliest Spanish explorers in the 15th century brought ships stocked with European domesticated animals. Yet for nearly two centuries, the Maya living in Guatemala’s Peten Lakes region continued to rely on traditional wild animal species. A small number of cow and horse bones have been identified in Contact period contexts at Zacpeten and Tayasal, but significant changes in animal use are only visible after the Spanish began to build missions in the region during the early 1700s. We explore...
Tales of Bronze Age People: A Transdisciplinary Look at the Mobility of Persons, Materials and Ideas in Nordic Bronze Age Denmark (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tales of Bronze Age People is a three-year (2018-2021) interdisciplinary research project supported by a Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens grant (CF18-0005) led by Karin Margarita Frei, Research Professor in Archaeometry at the National Museum of Denmark. The project investigates the dynamic ways in which people navigated social lives in the Early Nordic...