Radiocarbon Dates and Freshwater Resource Use within Prehistoric Diets

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The human remains of Early to Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age populations surrounding Lake Baikal have known and large offsets in their radiocarbon ages caused by “old carbon” in freshwater ecosystems. This freshwater reservoir effect (FRE) causes human radiocarbon ages to appear older based on the amount of old carbon each individual consumed through the freshwater component of their diet. Human archaeological radiocarbon dates at Baikal have been corrected using equations based on bulk stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values as indicators of past freshwater food consumption, but these corrections produce large error ranges. This research tested carbon compound-specific carbon isotope analysis on amino acids and bulk stable sulfur and hydrogen isotope analysis as alternative isotope systems to distinguish the freshwater component of past human diets, thus improving the precision for dating of key transitions in these hunter-fisher-gatherer populations. Additionally, this research tested the utility of compound specific carbon isotope indicators of freshwater resource consumption in a region where the baseline freshwater resources had complex and wide-ranging bulk stable carbon isotope values. An additional pilot study of both modern and archaeological fish samples provides insight into the mechanisms driving past and modern FRE for rivers surrounding Lake Baikal.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35988.0