ISOTOPES, PLANTS, AND RESERVOIR EFFECTS: CASE STUDY FROM THE CASPIAN STEPPE BRONZE AGE

ISOTOPES, PLANTS, AND RESERVOIR EFFECTS Shishlina, N.; Zazovskaya, E.; van der Plicht, J.; Sevastyanov, V.; Boaretto, E.; Rebollo Franco, N.R. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. ABSTRACT. Bronze Age human and animal bone collagen from several steppe Bronze Age cultures (i.e. Early Catacomb, East and West Manych Catacomb, and Lola cultures) shows large variations in 13 C and 15 N values. In general, we observed that the older the sample, the lower the 13 C and 15 N values. We hypothesize that more positive values of 13 C and 15 N are caused by change in diet and a more arid climate. For ancient sheep during drier periods of the Early Catacomb, East and West Manych Catacomb, and Lola cultures, we observed 2 groups with different C and N isotopic compositions, reflecting consumption of different types of fodder. During periods of aridization, C 4 and C 3 plants with high 15 N values appeared in the vegetation, also influencing bone collagen values. Human bones show reservoir effects, caused by aquatic diet components. These effects can be quantified by paired dating of human bone and associated terrestrial samples. Reservoir corrections have revised chronologies for the region. Some paired dates do not reveal reservoir effects. This can be explained in 2 alternative ways. One is that the human diet did not include aquatic components; rather, the diet was based on C 3 vegetation with high 15 N values (13-15‰), and flesh/milk of domesticated animals. An alternative explanation is that humans consumed food from freshwater resources without reservoir effects

High resolution δ18O seasonality record in a French Eemian tufa stromatolite (Caours, Somme Basin)

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