Oxygen isotopes (Other Keyword)
1-4 (4 Records)
In The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context, contributors reject the popularized link between societal collapse and drought in Maya civilization, arguing that a series of periodic "collapses," including the infamous Terminal Classic collapse (AD 750), were caused not solely by climate change-related droughts but by a combination of other social, political, and environmental factors. New and senior scholars of archaeology and environmental science explore the timing and intensity of droughts...
Oxygen Isotope Variability in Water Sources on the Colorado Plateau: Preliminaries to Stable Isotope Models of Prehistoric Irrigation (2015)
For aboriginal agriculturalists, subsistence strategies are tightly constrained by ecological conditions. The primary carbohydrate staple of prehistoric communities in the American Southwest (Zea mays) derives from low-altitude, subtropical conditions in Mesoamerica and is at its environmental limit on the cooler, more arid Colorado Plateau. In areas like Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah, environmental limitations were addressed by either of two strategies. Dry farming with summer monsoonal...
Reconstructing Palaeolithic Prey Migration using Oxygen and Laser Ablation Strontium Isotope Measurements in tooth enamel (2017)
This presentation reports isotopic data collected for an investigation of food storage behaviours at the European Gravettian sites of Dolní Vĕstonice-Pavlov (Czech Republic) and Late Glacial site of Kostenki 11 (Russian Federation) dated between 30,000-20,000 years ago. Our methods use strontium isotope (high-resolution measurements by laser ablation) and oxygen isotope analysis to investigate seasonal mobility of the main prey species: woolly mammoth, reindeer, horse, fox and wolf. The isotopic...
SIMS reveals Diagenesis and Seasonal Paleoprecipitation: A New Method for Reconstructing Past Environments (2016)
One goal of zooarchaeological inquiry is to reconstruct past environments. This presentation will highlight a new method to identify paleoprecipitation records from the stable oxygen isotope values (δ18Oen) recorded in tooth enamel. Seasonal rainfall patterns are reconstructed using a secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) to generate high-resolution serial spot analyses (13 µm spots) of δ18Oen. Additionally, this presentation will address the specific issue of identifying diagenesis...