Geographical origin assignment of sheep wool textiles using light stable isotopes

Summary

Identifying which of a group of material cultural objects is non-local has long been part of artefact analysis in archaeology. Identifying the movement of objects, and the movement of ideas about how to make and use objects, is important to understanding physical and ideological links between sites. This work has relied on data from typological, technological and chemical analyses of object construction and use.

Textiles made from sheep wool were a highly valuable commodity which was traded long-distance in the Middle Ages in Europe. This presentation will demonstrate the use of light stable isotopic analysis (carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen) to identify the origin of textile samples (n=92 from 5 locations in Northern Europe), by comparison with a baseline isoscape constructed from samples of modern sheep wool (n= 171 from 16 flocks) and archaeological sheep bone collagen (n=62 from 5 sites) isotope data. The presentation will discuss how to integrate isotopic data with existing typological understanding of the artefacts, and sources of uncertainty deriving from farming practice variability (both past and present), keratin diagenesis, and site type. The application of the method to textiles from other regions and in other raw materials will be explored.

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

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