Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stable isotope studies are at the forefront of archaeological research, engaging with a broad array of materials, from seeds, human and animal remains, ceramic residues, to soils. These data are used to address engaging questions, such as the spread of animal and plant domestication, migration, foodways, disease transmission, and environmental pollution and toxicity. This session aims to bring together scholars who are utilizing stable isotopes in novel ways, whether that is bringing the method to new regions or time periods, exploring interdisciplinary applications, or developing isotopic methods. The topic is purposefully broad as we hope to bring together scholars working on diverse geographic, temporal, material, and theoretical questions. By showcasing the global and diachronic applications of stable isotope research, this session will provide fruitful conversations that can help spark the next creative and novel isotopic paradigm in archaeology.

Other Keywords
Mobility • Archaeometry & Materials Analysis • Subsistence and Foodways • Worldwide

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

Documents

Charting the Understudied Landscape: Isotopic Baselines for CAM Plants and Other Native Organisms in Peru’s Tierras Blancas Region (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Anya Akimoff.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tierras Blancas Valley in the Nasca region of southern coastal Peru is home to a diverse array of plant and animal species. The Nasca culture, which emerged during the Early Intermediate Period (100-650 C.E.), primarily used ceramics to depict these natural elements in their iconography. While previous isotope studies have investigated...
Contact, Colonists, and Common Pool Resources: Insights from SIA of Terrestrial Fauna from North Carolina Coast and Interior in the Little Ice Age (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Beth Scaffidi.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, human skeletons have become less accessible to bioarchaeologists aiming to understand past lifeways through destructive chemical analyses—despite these methods being more affordable, accessible, and well-established than ever in the biological, social, and life sciences. Human skeletons provide the most direct evidence of how...
Interdisciplinary approaches to plant stable isotope analysis: a case study from Late Antique Roman Karanis (Egypt). (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Frits Heinrich.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Stable plant isotope analysis can provide proxy data to help model agricultural practices in the past, such as manuring and irrigation, or reconstruct environmental circumstances (e.g., related to water availability). Interpretation of such data is often challenging as they can be explained through different mechanisms or socioeconomic...
Isotopic and NAA Investigations into Globalizing Social Communities in Ancient Aksum, Ethiopia 50-800 AD (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Dilpreet Basanti.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> This talk presents stable isotope and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) results to examine the development of social and geo-local communities during the globalizing punctuations of ancient Aksum, Ethiopia. Aksum (50-800 AD) was the capital of a major polity well-known for its central role in the Indian Ocean trade. Aksum’s most notable...
Isotopic evidence reveals heterogeneous dietary adaptations across the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Li Tang.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tibetan Plateau has long prompted archaeological interest with regards to how human societies could have occupied this climatically-harsh and resource-poor environment. Full-scale permanent occupation of the interior plateau after 3500 cal BP has been variously linked to barley-based agriculture, pastoralism, or mixed agropastoralism, but...
A multi-isotopic approach of understanding human paleoecology and land-use during the MIS 3 at the Gotera site, Southern Ethiopia (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Seminew Mogesie.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> The Late Plesitocene saw major developments in human behavior including technological transition, behavioral modernity, range expansion, and dispersal within and beyond Africa which broadly overlapped with ecological and climatic fluctuations. However, we know little about the ecological and environmental settings through which H. sapiens...
New Biomolecular Insights into Ancient Steppe Subsistence Economies: Transitions in Eastern Kazakhstan from the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 BCE) through the Saka Period (900 BCE - 500 CE) (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Kalodner.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> Bronze and Iron Age Eastern Kazakhstan, bordered in the northeast by the Altai-Sayan Mountains and the southeast by the Saur-Tarbagatai Mountains, lay along not only the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) but also within an open steppe corridor linking the eastern Eurasian steppe, western Eurasian steppe, and China. Given its geographic...
Sustained Island-Mainland Connections in the Colonial Caribbean Analysis of Jaguar and Puma Canine Pendants Recovered from LaSoye 2, Dominica (2025)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Wallman.
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> The two largest felids in the Americas, the jaguar (Panthera onca) and the puma (Puma concolor), serve as important markers of spirituality, ritual, and identity among Indigenous cultures in the Americas. The symbolism associated with jaguars, in particular, was transferred by the populations who migrated from mainland South America to...