A Life History of the Transbay Man as Reconstructed through Stable Isotope Analysis

Summary

By analyzing tissues that develop at different points in the life

cycle, such as early-forming first molars and later-forming third molars,

archaeologists can trace the dietary life histories of individuals from the

past. Because environments differ in the food and water resources, these

dietary patterns can also be linked to mobility patterns. This paper

reconstructs a dietary and mobility life history of the 7600-year-old

"Transbay Man" discovered in 2014 in downtown San Francisco, CA, a time

period for which little is known in the Bay Area. We attempt to estimate the

age at which he was weaned, his early childhood diet, the extent of his

foraging territory, and his adult diet from a range of isotopic signatures

preserved in his teeth and bone.

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)   •
• One of California's Earliest Visitors: The Discovery of Transbay Man

Keywords

Spatial Coverage