Human and dog Bayesian dietary mixing models using bone collagen stable isotope ratios from ancestral Iroquoian sites in southern Ontario

Abstract

Under the archaeological canine surrogacy approach (CSA) it is assumed that because dogs were reliant on humans for food, they had similar diets to the people with whom they lived. As a result, the stable isotope ratios of their tissues (bone collagen and apatite, tooth enamel and dentine collagen) will be close to those of the humans with whom they cohabited. Therefore, in the absence of human tissue, dog tissue isotopes can be used to help reconstruct past human diets. Here δ13C and δ15N ratios on previously published dog and human bone collagen from fourteenth-seventeenth century AD ancestral Iroquoian village archaeological sites and ossuaries in southern Ontario are used with MixSIAR, a Bayesian dietary mixing model, to determine if the dog stable isotope ratios are good proxies for human isotope ratios in dietary modeling for this context. The modeling results indicate that human dietary protein came primarily from maize and high trophic level fish and dogs from maize, terrestrial animals, low trophic level fish, and human feces. While isotopes from dog tissues can be used as general analogs for human tissue isotopes under CSA, greater insights into dog diets can be achieved with Bayesian dietary mixing models.