Charring effects on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values on C4 plants: Inferences for archaeological investigations

Abstract

Experimental studies demonstrated that charring affects stable isotope values of plant remains. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the impact of charring to reliably interpret δ13C and δ15N values in archaeobotanical remains before using this approach to reconstruct past water management, paleoclimatic changes, and infer paleodietary patterns. Research so far has focused mostly on C3 plants while the charring effect on C4 plants is less understood. This study explored the effects of charring on δ13C, δ15N, %C, %N, and C:N in grains of two C4 species, Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench (NADP-ME) and Cenchrus americanus (L.) Morrone (heterotypic synonym Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.) (NAD-ME), grown under the same controlled environmental conditions (watering, light, atmospheric humidity). Sorghum and pearl millet grains were charred from 1 to 3 h at 200–300 °C. Comparing first the uncharred grains, the results show that sorghum has lower δ15N and higher δ13C values than pearl millet. This evidence is also recorded in the charred grains. The charring experiments indicate that the temperature to which the grains are exposed has a higher impact than time on the preservation, mass loss, %C, %N, C:N, and δ13C and δ15N values. Every 50 °C of increase resulted in significant increases of δ15N (+0.37‰) and of δ13C (+0.06‰) values. Increasing the duration of charring to 3 h resulted in significant changes of δ15N (+0.17‰) and no significant changes for δ13C (−0.04‰) values. The average charring effects estimated in our experiment is 0.27‰ (95% CI between −0.02 and 0.56) for δ15N and −0.18‰ (95% CI between −0.30 and −0.06‰) for δ13C. Considering the average values, our data show that pearl millet is more affected by charring than sorghum; however, according to the standard deviations, sorghum shows a greater variability charring effect than pearl millet. This study provides new information to correctly assessing the isotopic values obtained from ancient C4 crops, providing a charring offset specific for C4 plants. Furthermore, it suggests that NAD-ME and NADP-ME species present isotopic differences under the same growing conditions and this must be taken into account in analytical works on ancient C4 crops.