<html>Better Baselines? Creating Robust and Meaningful Sulfur (δ<sup>34</sup>S) Isoscapes for Archaeological Studies of Residence and Mobility</html>
Author(s): Derek Hamilton
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
<html>
Many of the central questions of archaeology engage directly with themes relating to movement, mobility, and migration. The two most common isotope systems that have been exploited for this purpose are strontium (<sup>87</sup>Sr/<sup>86</sup>Sr) and oxygen (δ<sup>18</sup>O), with sulfur isotopes (δ<sup>34</sup>S) being a much most recent addition to the isotopic arsenal for investigating residence and mobility. Because the application of sulfur is not limited solely to tooth enamel, by targeting skeletal tissues that represent different periods in an individual’s lifetime, it has the possibility of directly tracing residence, isotopically, an individual throughout a lifetime. The poster presented here demonstrates how archaeologists can and should be thinking about ‘mobility’ isotopes when developing isoscapes, with a particular focus of sulfur. Not only do our sulfur isoscapes need to reflect our understanding of the natural variability of δ<sup>34</sup>S in the environment but they also should reflect our model(s) for land-use and resource procurement. Without considering the natural and anthropogenic impacts on the sulfur values of individuals, our interpretation run the risk of being misleading, or even incorrect.
</html>
Cite this Record
Better Baselines? Creating Robust and Meaningful Sulfur (δ34S) Isoscapes for Archaeological Studies of Residence and Mobility. Derek Hamilton. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 511145)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
Europe: Western Europe
•
Mobility
•
Worldwide
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 53600