Stable Isotope Analysis Study of Dietary Change from the Qing Dynasty to Modern Day in Northwestern Taiwan

Summary

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

Taiwan has a unique cultural and dietary history within Asia. This is in large part due to the local indigenous Austronesian populations, recent mass migration and colonization from peoples across China, as well as colonial occupations by the Netherlands, Spain, and Japan over the last 400 years alone. However, this recent history and its impact on dietary culture in Taiwan today is not well documented. This study applies stable isotope analysis to a large sample of Taiwanese teeth (both enamel and dentin) samples from three distinct temporal periods that cover approximately 300 years: the Qing dynasty Taiwan (1683-1895 CE), Japanese occupation (1895-1945 CE), and into the early 21st century. In this poster we present new carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen stable isotope data to reconstruct dietary and migration practices over these periods. These data are compared to historical sources, both secondary and primary, of recent dietary cultural history of Taiwan, as well as previous Taiwanese and Chinese studies utilizing stable isotope analyses from deeper archaeological time scales. These new data elucidate Taiwanese dietary trends over time, including aspects of gendered differences in food intake as well as cross cultural exchange.

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): 41528.0