Oxygen and strontium isotopes as provenance indicators of fish at archaeological sites: the case study of Sagalassos, SW Turkey

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the potential use of oxygen and strontium isotope ratios (d 18 O p and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) measured in archaeological fish enamel as provenance indicators. d 18 O p and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr were measured in a suite of archaeological carp remains recovered from the Anatolian townsite of Sagalassos dated to the Early Byzantine period (AD 450e650) and compared to that of modern fish, river and lake waters from the Anatolian region. We used sequential leaches in weak acetic acid to remove diagenetic Sr from fossil tooth enamel, monitoring the effectiveness of this approach by measuring the Sr/Ca ratios of the leachates via an isotope dilution thermal ionization mass spectrometry method (ID-TIMS). d 18 O p values mostly excluded a riverine origin. 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of one fish overlapped with the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signatures of two lakes in the Anatolian region, and at least one lake (Gölcük) could be removed as a candidate owing to a very distinctive 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signature not found in any of the fish remains. Most of the tooth samples analyzed could not be assigned a precise geographical origin since the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios measured in enamel did not match that of any of the local lakes selected as potential origin. This result suggests that carp may have originated from lakes that have not yet been sampled, although this conclusion is not supported by other archaeological evidence. Alternatively, the lack of correspondence between lakes and fish Sr isotope ratios highlights several possible sources of uncertainties including spatial heterogeneity in 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio within a lake, the contribution of dietary strontium to the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio of fish tooth enamel, and post-mortem alteration of the tooth Sr isotope signal during fossilization. In spite of the high precision of the strontium isotope analyses and the wide range of variation in the surface waters of the Anatolian lakes and rivers, this method may remain limited to distinguishing between lakes situated in regions of bedrock of very distinct age and geology until these sources of uncertainty are more fully investigated.

Introducing δ88/86Sr analysis in archaeology: a demonstration of the utility of strontium isotope fractionation in paleodietary studies

“…This technique is an increasingly common method to identify archaeological human residential mobility (e.g., Bentley et al, 2007;Giblin, 2009;Montgomery et al, 2005;Price et al, 2008b;Sjögren et al, 2009;Slovak et al, 2009;Turner et al, 2009). Although less common, there is great potential for 87 Sr/ 86 Sr analysis to determine the geographic origins of plants (Åberg, 1995;Almeida and Vaconcelos, 2001;English et al, 2001;Frei et al, 2009) and animals (Bendrey et al, 2009;Britton et al, 2009;Dufour et al, 2007;Hoppe et al, 1999;Price et al, 2008a;Schweissing and Grupe, 2003b;Shaw et al, 2009;Sykes et al, 2006). In addition, since seawater exhibits 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ¼ 0.7092 (Veizer, 1989), some scholars have used 87 Sr/ 86 Sr to examine the presence of marine products in past diets Sealy et al, 1991).…”

The geographic origins of Nasca trophy heads using strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope data

“…Ashford and Jones, 2006;Dufour et al, 2007;Hoppe et al, 1999;Ingram and Weber, 1999;Killingley, 1980;Schweissing and Grupe, 2003;Sykes et al, 2006) and plants (e.g. Benson et al, 2006;English et al, 2001).…”

Oxygen isotopic composition of fruit carbonate in Lithospermeae and its potential for paleoclimate research in the Mediterranean

“…In terrestrial environments, different types of carbonate materials can serve as archives of the δ 18 O values of paleoprecipitation. Up to now, paleoenvironmental research in the Mediterranean used primarily oxygen isotopic signatures in carbonates of speleothems (Bar-Matthews et al, 1997;Burns et al, 2001;BarMatthews et al, 2003;McDermott, 2004;Drysdale et al, 2006;Mattey et al, 2008) and lacustrine sediments (Roberts et al, 2001, 2008 andreferences therein;Jones et al, 2006;Leng et al, 2006), whereas δ 18 O records in other carbonate materials such as pedogenic (Magaritz, 1986;Pustovoytov et al, 2007) and biogenic carbonates (Quade et al, 1994;Goodfriend, 1999;Dufour et al, 2007) remained less explored. It is notable that in the Mediterranean, biogenic carbonates investigated as a paleoclime proxy have been restricted to animal remains.…”