Mobility and diet in Prehistoric Denmark: strontium isotope analysis and incremental stable isotope analysis of human remains from the Limfjord area

Abstract

The Limfjord in Denmark held a prominent position throughout Prehistory as a natural communication port between east and west. Identifying the presence of non-local individuals might shed light on socio-economic and cultural changes occurring in the Limfjord area. Existing studies attempting to do so using strontium isotope analysis on Danish prehistoric remains focus on certain archaeological time periods and geographic locations, resulting in an uneven distribution of analysed material. This study aimed at filling a gap in the existing literature, both from a geographical as well as a chronological point of view. Additionally, carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis on bone and tooth dentine from these individuals was carried out to examine dietary changes between childhood and adulthood. The strontium isotope results revealed four non-local individuals, two from the Neolithic, one from the Early Roman Iron Age and one from the Germanic Iron/Viking Age. We conducted incremental stable isotope analysis of tooth dentine from the four non-local individuals to investigate the palaeodietary information in their dental records at a higher resolution and potentially pinpoint their age at the time of movement. The two Neolithic individuals revealed stable isotope ratios that might be indicative of stress.

Testing the Use of δ2H Values for Reservoir Corrections in Radiocarbon Dating Human Bone

“…The percentage of marine food intake was calculated based on linear interpolation between a terrestrial and marine endpoint: –21.5‰ and –11.8‰ were used for δ 13 C values, 5.4‰ and 13.1‰ for δ 15 N values and –47.0‰ and 87.0‰ for δ 2 H values. The δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of the terrestrial endmembers are based on the average of stable isotope results from 53 herbivore bone samples from the Limfjord area, while the marine endmember values based on the average of stable isotope results from 27 bone samples from marine animals (van der Sluis 2017). Hydrogen stable isotope analysis was executed on a selection of bone samples, 13 herbivores and 10 marine animals (fish, seal and orca) (Table 1).…”

Homogeneous Glacial Landscapes Can Have High Local Variability of Strontium Isotope Signatures: Implications for Prehistoric Migration Studies

“…Accepting that 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values up to 0.716 (or more conservative 0.715) are obtainable in central Jutland and that values up 0.71328 are obtainable in western Zealand, it appears that many provenance and migration interpretations of prehistoric artifacts and individuals from Denmark warrant revision (e.g., Frei et al, 2017bFrei et al, , 2019Nielsen et al, 2020;Van der Sluis et al, 2020). Below we will comment in more detail on four investigations, which are within the realm of our study areas.…”

“…For example, the Danish isoscape of Frei and Frei (2011) is based on close to 200 water samples covering an area of 43,000 km 2 , and in 2013, Frei and Frei published a baseline for the Danish island of Bornholm (588 km 2 ) based on 51 samples. The isoscape for mainland Denmark has subsequently served as a reference map in several studies of prehistoric provenance and mobility ranging in time from the Neolithic to the early Middle age (e.g., Frei et al, 2015Frei et al, , 2017aFelding et al, 2020;Van der Sluis et al, 2020). In practice, these large-scale isoscapes are typically combined withor replaced by local isoscapes developed for specific mobility studies in the areas surrounding the archaeological sites under study (Price et al, 2002;Bentley, 2006;Slovak and Paytan, 2011;Maurer et al, 2012).…”

Ancestral commons: the deep-time emergence of Bronze Age pastoral mobility

“…Nevertheless, at Møgelvang, in northern Jutland, an individual dated to 2901–2586 BC had a non-local strontium isotopic signature, indicating an origin outside of modern Denmark (van der Sluis et al . 2020). These remains were derived from a disturbed Early Neolithic tomb, which had been subsequently reused multiple times in antiquity.…”