The Walking Dead: Osteological and isotopic indicators of mobility from Middle Bronze Age commingled human and faunal burials in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan

Summary

Tracing the mobility patterns of pastoralists and their herds is a critical part of illuminating the lifeways of people who inhabited the southern Caucasus in the past. During the 2014 season, the Naxcivan Archaeological Project excavated several Middle Bronze age kurgans overlooking the Şərur Plain. In these burials humans and animals were interred together, speaking to the significance of the animals in the lifeways of the people inhabiting the area during the Middle Bronze Age. We correlate data from bioarchaeological and zooarchaeological analysis with isotope analyses of δ18O.

We performed an analysis of δ18O ratios on both the human and animal remains from these burials, sampling human molars to determine movement over a lifetime and sequentially sampling across animal molars to determine seasonal grazing patterns. These results are compared to known environmental bioavailability ranges of δ18O in Naxçivan. This allows us to calculate both likely elevation and geographical locality during enamel deposition of each individual. Our research is part of a longterm study to understand patterns of movement of people and, by their agency, animals throughout the landscape.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage