Isotopic Analyses of Diet in Late Prehistoric Southwestern Transylvania

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Southwestern Transylvania houses a rich prehistoric archaeological record, as well as abundant natural resources, including salt, tin, and some of the richest copper and gold deposits in Europe. The Mureș River, which connected prehistoric communities in Eastern and Central Europe, also flows through the region. Despite its status as an economic and cultural crossroads, the biocultural backdrop of southwestern Transylvania has been understudied. This analysis presents the first major isotopic study of diet in southwestern Transylvania, including the results of over 60 analyses of carbon and nitrogen from human and faunal bone collagen; comparisons of whole diet and dietary protein are also made for a subsample of human individuals. The human samples encompass key contexts frequently used in archaeological comparisons, including the mountains and the lowlands, cemeteries and settlements, and the Early and Late Bronze Age. Our data show no statistically significant differences between human carbon and nitrogen values for the uplands and the lowlands. However, our results do reveal significant increases in human δ13C values over time when comparing the Early Bronze Age and Late Bronze–Early Iron Age, and well as significant differences in human δ15N values between individuals buried in cemeteries and individuals buried in settlements.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36746.0