Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratio analysis of Bronze Age humans from the Xiabandi cemetery, Xinjiang, China: Implications for cultural interactions between the East and West

Abstract

The Andronovo culture of Central Asia is characterized by wheat agriculture and sheep/goat and cattle animal husbandry. Sometime during the beginning to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Andronovo migrated from the Kazakh Steppe into the modern-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China and became one of the most important archaeological complexes in this area. At about the same time or earlier, populations from the East characterized by: millet agriculture, Mongolian race, and painted pottery spread westward from northern China along the mountain ranges of the Gansu Corridor and met the Andronovo culture in the central part of Xinjiang. It is not known how and when these cultures originating from the East and West first started to interact with each other in Xinjiang, and this is especially true in the southwest region of Xinjiang, which is a crucial transport corridor between the Eurasian Steppe and the populations of Central Asia. The analysis of stable isotope ratios of carbon ( δ 13C) and nitrogen ( δ 15N) permits an investigation of human diets and lifeways and has the potential to shed light on cultural interactions between the East and the West. Here δ 13C and δ 15N results of human bone collagen ( n =27) are presented to reconstruct dietary patterns and cultural communications at the Xiabandi cemetery site in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.