Why terrestrial diets in island environments? Evolutionary considerations of isotopic results from Rapa Nui

Summary

Archaeology and isotopic studies have demonstrated several examples of initial colonists of Pacific Islands subsisting mainly on terrestrial diets, with exotic domesticates preferred over local seafood. Seemingly a poor adaptation to remote island environments, this appears confusing from a behavioural ecology perspective. From a culture evolutionary viewpoint, however, this could demonstrate how intergenerational transmission of human behaviour may preserve dietary traditions in long-distance migration into vastly different environments. Here this hypothesis is explored through high resolution isotopic evidence from Rapa Nui. d13C and d15N compound specific analysis of individual amino acids from human and faunal remains, and a range of reference food items, confirms that seafood was not a significant component of early Rapa Nui diet. Additionally, rat collagen amino acid isotope values provide a baseline to test the hypothesis of human diets based largely on rats and chickens, and to investigate effects of environmental change on Rapa Nui. Consumption of palm nuts by introduced Pacific rats has been proposed as playing a role in deforestation. Multivariate statistical analysis of amino acid data investigates this, and whether palm nuts may have been a component of human diets too. This presentation situates the updated results within the broader evolutionary questions.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Evolutionary theory and archaeology, Part I: Cultural transmission, cultural evolution, and evolutionary archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage