Howdy Neighbour – Transgressing Borders and Peering over the Fence to Examine the Application of Isotopic Analyses to Bioarchaeology in Anatolia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stable isotope analyses contributing to archaeological research in Anatolia was a relatively late bloomer, beginning in the early 2000s and only gathering pace in the last 5-10 years. Currently research into dietary habits, subsistence practices, and mobility has focused on early proto-sedentary and sedentary agricultural populations in Anatolia and in later historical periods. This has resulted in ca. 5-6000 years of prehistory being relatively untouched by such quantitative scientific techniques. Instead, research in these intervening periods has focused primarily on material culture, where artefacts are studied individually, largely detached from their surrounding environment and social, cultural, technological, and economic contexts. This is starting to change now in conjunction with the realisation of the importance of bioarchaeology as an encompassing field, providing a holistic approach to examining prehistoric populations.

This talk will discuss the importance and valuable contribution of stable isotope analyses in better understanding dietary and subsistence practices, and mobility. Furthermore, how when applied in conjunction with human osteological, archaeozoological, and archaeobotanical analyses we can begin to greater understand human interactions on an inter-population level and pan-regionally, as well as on a more local and intra-population level in these pivotal periods of societal development in Anatolia, and further afield.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The South Caucasus Region: Crossroads of Societies & Polities. An Assessment of Research Perspectives in Post-Soviet Times

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24007