Isotopic Evidence for Human Movement into Central England during the Early Neolithic (original) (raw)
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Journal of Analytical Atomic …, 2012
This paper presents a compilation of strontium and oxygen isotope data from human tooth enamel that has been produced at NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory over the last c.15 years. These many and often small studies are here combined to provide an overview of data from Britain. The strontium isotope composition ranges between 0.7078 and 0.7165 (excluding individuals deemed to be of non-British origin). The median Sr concentration is 84 ppm but there is a vector of increasing Sr concentrations related to seawater strontium isotope composition that is seen in individuals predominantly from the west coast of Scotland attributed to the used of kelp as a fertilizer. The oxygen isotope data is normally distributed with a mean value of 17.7 per mil +/- 1.4 per mil (2SD n = 615). Two subpopulations of local individuals have been identified that provide control groups for human enamel values from the eastern side of Britain where there are lower rainfall levels: 17.2 per mil +/- 1.3 per mil, (2SD, n = 83) and western area of Britain where rainfall levels are higher 18.2 per mil +/- 1 per mil, (2SD, n = 40). These data make it possible to make direct comparisons of population means between burial populations and the control dataset to assess commonality of origin.
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Annals of Human Biology, 2010
Strontium isotopes are a powerful tool which provide information about provenance directly from the tissues of humans rather than the grave context and burial goods. Geographical variation in strontium isotopes is primarily controlled by the underlying geology but there are many other factors that need to be considered before migratory individuals can be identified. Consequently, despite many studies which have shown that the method works well, it is clear that much remains to be clarified and it will not work for every question or in every place. It rests on the assumption that people were sourcing their food locally and that there is a measurable strontium isotope difference between the place the person migrated from and the place they migrated to. As migrants may deliberately seek out familiar soil types and terrains in their new homeland, some questions surrounding major migration events may prove intractable for this technique. Other factors that can create heterogeneity or homogeneity leading to false positives or false negatives, such as human choices or coastal subsistence, are explored and the metabolism of strontium into human tooth enamel is discussed. Several models of land-use choices by humans are presented to highlight the subtleties inherent in the isotope data and these are used to interpret archaeological human isotope ratios from three studies.
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