Dietary Biographies: Chronicling past husbandry, mobility, and exchange practices through isotopic analysis of plant and animal tissues

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

The tissues of animal and plant remains recovered from modern and archaeological contexts provide a deep record of detailed dietary and environmental information that can be unlocked with stable isotope analysis. This session brings together advances in our understanding of the properties of mineralized, proteinaceous, and carbonized tissues and the distribution of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium isotopes in natural biomes to reconstruct individual dietary and mobility histories of animals and humans. The ways in which humans intentionally manipulate their plant and animal resources through management and exchange, and establishing the isotopic outcomes of these activities, is integral to documenting social and economic dynamics in ancient societies.