A New Bioavailable Strontium Baseline for the Baikal Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A new bioavailable strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) baseline was created for the Baikal region, covering c. 1.5 million square kilometres. With an ongoing, extensive archaeological investigation of c. 200 prehistoric cemetery sites in this vast area, there is a need for a reliable isotopic model of environmental strontium variation to contextualise human and faunal data. The new isoscape is based on 349 plant samples, including 174 new measurements. The strontium ratios in plants were highly variable and ranged from 0.70643 in the mafic rocks in Trans-Baikal to 0.75225 in Precambrian rocks of felsic origin on the west coast of Lake Baikal. The uniquely distinct geological variability and biodiversity in the Baikal region of Siberia provide favourable conditions for isotopic studies and method development. This paper compares and evaluates two approaches to modelling isoscapes: spatial aggregation and machine learning, each used to produce and compare effectiveness of geographic assignments based on strontium ratios measured in dental enamel. The new baseline and spatial assignments scripts can also be applied in other fields: forensics, environmental sciences or ecology, to support studies of provenance and mobility in both the past and present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40121.0