Isotopic values of diet of Blastocerus dichotomus (marsh deer) in Paraná Basin, South America

Abstract

The marsh deer (Blastocerus dichotomus, Illiger, 1815) is the largest contemporary South American deer, and its habitat includes the floodplains and wetlands of eastern South America. Throughout the Holocene these deer were widely used by indigenous societies, from the southern banks of the Amazon River to the Río de la Plata River, and from the Andean foothills to the Atlantic Ocean. However, despite the enormous ecological and archaeological importance of this ungulate in the region, our knowledge of the isotopic values of their diet is almost nonexistent. This paper is the first systematic approach to the study of the isotopic values of this mammal's diet, using archaeological and present-day samples from interconnected watersheds of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers in east-central Argentina. The results obtained from 24 measurements indicate an average value of −21.09 ± 1.46‰ in δ13C collagen, with a low coefficient of variation (6.92%). The data indicate a marked preference for consumption of plants with a C3 photosynthetic pathway. Most of the observed variability in the isotopic values corresponds to the period 900–1430 14C years BP, a time range during which the values show higher consumption of C4 plants. This it could be related with a period where temperature and associated humidity increased, synchronous in the area with the Medieval Climate Anomaly.