Abstract
Strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of human skeletal remains is an important method in archaeology to examine past human mobility and landscape use. 87Sr/86Sr signatures of a given location are largely determined by the underlying bedrock, and these geology specific isotope signatures are incorporated into skeletal tissue through food and water, often permitting the differentiation of local and non-local individuals in past human populations. This study presents the results of a systematic survey of modern flora and fauna (n = 100) from 14 locations to map the bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr signatures of the Conchucos region, an area where the extent of geologic variability was previously unknown. We illustrate the necessity to examine the variation in 87Sr/86Sr values of the different geological formations available to human land use to document the range of possible local 87Sr/86Sr values. Within the Conchucos region we found significant variation in environmental 87Sr/86Sr values (0.7078–0.7214). The resulting isoscape represents the largest regionally specific bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr map (3,840 km2) to date for the Andes, and will serve as a baseline for future archaeological studies of human mobility in this part of the Peruvian highlands.
Highlights
The study of mobility and migration are important topics in contemporary archaeology [1]
While human mobility can be studied using a variety of archaeological indicators, recent years have witnessed a marked increase in investigations that employ isotopic analyses of human remains to study ancient population movements [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
Sample preparation was conducted in the Primate Ecology and Molecular Anthropology laboratory (PEMA) at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC)
Summary
The study of mobility and migration are important topics in contemporary archaeology [1]. Sr is composed of different percentages of the following four stable isotopes: 84Sr (~0.56%), 86Sr (~9.87%), 87Sr (~7.04%) and 88Sr (~82.53%) [74, 75] Of these four isotopes, 87Sr is radiogenic and formed over time by the radioactive decay of rubidium (87Rb) in the bedrock, which has a half-life of ~4.88 x 1010 years. Modern anthropogenic Sr contaminations can be introduced through industrial fertilizers and even via dust from large scale construction sites [15, 59, 71, 75]
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