Isotope analysis

Abstract

Isotope data are used in reconstructing diet, paleodiet, ecology, paleoecology, climate, paleoclimate, aridity, pathology and health, migration assessments, and weaning and other life‐history patterns in humans and nonhuman primates, a large number of other animals, and their fossil precursors and relatives. Isotope analysis originated in physics and chemistry, and was quickly assimilated by biological anthropologists, bioarchaeologists, and archaeologists, who used carbon and nitrogen isotopes for diet reconstruction, oxygen isotopes for climate and paleoclimate, and strontium isotopes for migration studies. Isotope analysis now routinely informs in acculturation studies, status differences in diet, diet in health and disease, and the paleoecology of our fossil ancestors and relatives.