Isotopes as palaeoeconomic indicators: new applications in archaeoentomology

Taming the Waterways: The Europeanization of Southern Québec's Riverside Landscapes During the 16th–18thCenturies

“…The Granary Weevil is a primary pest of stored cereals and typically taken as an indicator for the presence of grains. While the species has been occasionally found in wheat thatch and straw (King 2010a(King , 2012, it and the Nearctic Anthonomus rubi (Strawberry Blossom Weevil) most likely indicate the dumping of human waste. A 1710 ordinance shows that garbage was to be transported to the site (Roy 1919), most likely for the intentional formation of renewed land through waste deposition (Bain and King 2011).…”

“…The study of palaeoecological materials, therefore, has huge potential to stand as evidence of past human activities (Huchet and Greenberg 2010;Kenward 1999;King 2012King , 2013King , 2014aKing , 2016Ponel et al 2000;Sadler 1991), living conditions (Bain 1997(Bain , 1998(Bain , 2004Buckland et al 1996;Kenward and Hall 1996;King and Hall 2008;King and Henderson 2014;McGovern 1991), diet (Bain 1998(Bain , 2001Buckland 1982;Kenward and Hall 1996;King 2010aKing , 2014b, and climate and ecology (Ashworth et al 1997;Bain and Prévost 2010;Coope 1973Coope , 1977Elias 1994;Hall et al 2007;King 2010a). Thus, environmental remains may play a crucial yet neglected role in archaeology-in our investigations of the human, and wider ecological and climatic, past.…”

“…34 G. King and T. Muller grains. However, while the granary beetle requires the presence of cereal grains for reproduction, it has been found in both modern and archaeological contexts in association with wheat-based thatch (King 2010a(King , 2012 (Böcher 1988). Two species of freshwater gastropods were present in the sample, representing Group 1.…”

Strontium isotopes as an indicator of human migration – easy questions, difficult answers

“…All findings on historical human populations obtained by archaeological or osteological analyses are currently expanded by molecular tests. Researchers describing the history of our species began to use analyses of long-lived iso-topes of several elements such as hydrogen (Hobson 1999;King 2012), oxygen (Hodell et al 2004;White et al 2004a), nitrogen (DeNiro 1987Hedman et al 2002;Pate et al 2002), carbon (Scherer et al 2007), sulphur (Fry et al 1982;Schoeninger and Moore 1992;Oelze et al 2012) and strontium, previously used e.g. in ecology (Reinhardt et al 2001;Porder et al 2003;Andrew Royle and Rubenstein 2004;Kennedy et al 2005;Ravikant and Bajpai 2010;Julien et al 2012), in paloeclimatic (Fricke et al 1998;Prohaska et al 2002) or geological research (Gorokhov et al 2001;Kontak et al 2001).…”