Isotopes in archaeology
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EDITORIAL
Isotopes in archaeology Ricardo Fernandes 1,2 & Klervia Jaouen 3
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Isotopic proxies have been employed within archaeological research since decades; however, their use has surged in recent years. Together with the increase in the number of published case studies, there have also been significant technical developments that improved greatly on available analytical techniques. Throughout the years, the introduction of novel isotopic proxies refined and expanded the existing knowledge on past environments and human activities. Such developments allowed for and were motivated by a growth of archaeological research topics. These have included, among others, climatic and environmental reconstruction, studies of past human diet, nutrition, and mobility, building accurate chronologies, past animal and crop management practices, pottery use, etc. Thus, an attempt at offering a complete overview of the applications and methodologies involved in isotopic analyses applied to archaeological research would represent an undertaking well beyond the limited scope of this special issue. Instead, this issue is aimed at highlighting a selection of special themes that represent a mix of well-established and recent topics within isotopic studies applied to archaeological research.
* Ricardo Fernandes [email protected]; [email protected] Klervia Jaouen [email protected] 1
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing St, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK
2
Leibniz-Laboratory for Radiometric Dating and Isotope Research, University of Kiel, Max-Eyth-Str. 11-13, 24118 Kiel, Germany
3
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
There is an increasing recognition among the archaeoisotope community of the need to build isotopic baselines which establish the environmental isotopic signals for the past time periods and regions under study. An example of this is given by Knipper et al. that investigated the diets of humans from the late Iron Age burial site of Basel-Gasfabrik (Switzerland). Human diet reconstruction was done using a Bayesian mixing model and relied on stable isotope measurements on humans and a large amount of locally available archaeological faunal and botanical remains. The outcome of the study observed inter-individual differences in dietary intakes (e.g. millet consumption) although there were no significant gender differences. The emphasis on the need to employ archaeological baseline material contemporaneous with the period under study is suggested by the results from the study by Roffet-Salque et al. This study concerned pottery use which is often investigated through carbon stable isotope analysis of fatty acids recovered from the clay matrix of archaeological ceramic vessels. However, Roffet-Salque et al. showed that special care must be taken when employing modern fat references for archaeological studies, namely when modern animals are not fe
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