Application of sulphur isotope ratios to examine weaning patterns and freshwater fish consumption in Roman Oxfordshire, UK

Nehlich, Olaf; Fuller, Benjamin T.; Jay, Mandy; Mora, Alice; Nicholson, Rebecca; Smith, Colin; Richards, Michael P.

doi:10.1016/j.gca.2011.06.009

Cited by 110 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…A child that is completely dependent on breast milk for protein will display enriched d 15 N over its mother by one trophic level, as has been shown in both controlled studies as well as in archaeological studies of human bone collagen of infants (Fogel et al, 1989;Katzenberg et al, 1996;Schurr, 1997;Herring et al, 1998;Fuller, et al 2006aFuller, et al ,2006bNehlich et al, 2011). However, as a child is weaned on solid foods, d…”

Section: Approach and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Sex‐biased weaning and early childhood diet among middle holocene hunter–gatherers in Central California

Eerkens

Bartelink

2013

American J Phys Anthropol

104

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This article evaluates age of weaning and early childhood diets of eight males and nine females from a Middle Holocene (4300-3000 BP) site in Central California, CA-CCO-548. All individuals died as adults. d 15N values from serial sections of dentin collagen in first molars suggest females were fully weaned, on average, by 3.6 years of age, about 0.4 years later than males in the sample, suggesting possible greater parental investment in female offspring. However, throughout childhood females consumed lower trophic-level foods than males. This could indicate greater investment in males through provisioning of higher quality foods, or alternatively, some degree of independent foraging by males starting as early as 2 to 3 years of age. Even as adults, these same males and females consumed a different range of foods as indicated by their bone collagen d Humans are unique among primates in terms of child investment and weaning practices. Not only is there extreme variation between and within particular societies, but offspring are typically weaned at much earlier ages than non-human primates, such as great apes. For example, accounting for differences in growth rates and life history effects, humans breastfeed on average less than half as long as our close relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas (Dettwyler, 2004;Kennedy, 2005).Early human weaning and the nature of early childhood diets, as well as high interindividual variation in such practices, has been used to speculate on a number of evolutionary processes in our species' past (Trivers, 1974;Blurton-Jones, 1986;Sellen and Smay, 2001, Stearns, 1992;Kaplan, 1996;Borgerhoff-Mulder, 1992, 2001Piperata, 2009). These processes often pit the costs of longer breastfeeding to parents, especially mothers, against benefits to offspring. Breast milk is a significant energetic investment for a mother. It can negatively impact her health, require her to work harder to obtain calories, take away from time she could be working (opportunity costs), and decrease her ability to get pregnant again, lowering her fertility and overall fitness, as well as that of her male partner (Delgado et al., 1982;Borgerhoff-Mulder, 1992;Riordan, 2005;Sellen, 2006;Piperata and Mattern, 2011). On the other hand, breast milk provides a child with a reliable and easily digestible source of calories and nutrients. Empirical evidence suggests that extended breastfeeding offers long-term benefits to children, such as increased stature, better cognitive capabilities (e.g., higher IQ), greater immunity to some diseases, and lower rates of obesity (Taren and Chen, 1993; Mortensen et al., 2002;Schack-Nielsen and Michaelsen, 2006), effects also seen in non-human primates (Hinde et al., 2009). For these reasons, the age at which a mother weans a child has often been used as a proxy measure of parental investment in offspring (Stuart-Macadam and Dettwyler, 1995;Humphrey, 2010).Research in human behavioral ecology suggests that parents will reduce their investment in children in environments where increas...

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Section: Approach and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Sex‐biased weaning and early childhood diet among middle holocene hunter–gatherers in Central California

Eerkens

Bartelink

2013

American J Phys Anthropol

104

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“…Detailed explanations of, and primary references for, the background chemistry and the techniques for the different isotope ratio analyses cannot be presented here for reasons of space, but excellent accounts, which provide the detail for the outline summaries below together with further primary references, can be found in Lee Thorp (2008), Hedges (2009), Bentley (2006, Montgomery (2010) and Nehlich et al (2011).…”

Section: Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

British Iron Age chariot burials of the Arras culture: a multi-isotope approach to investigating mobility levels and subsistence practices

et al. 2013

Self Cite

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Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. The majority of them are found on Chalk and the putative source region is alsoChalk. This has meant that a study using only strontium isotopes to identify mobile individuals is problematic. Here we present a range of isotope ratio data (strontium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur) for seven Chariot burials from Wetwang, Garton Station and Kirkburn. The majority of them are men and women who were born and lived locally, although the individual from Kirkburn is likely to have spent his childhood elsewhere. They do, however, differ quite subtly from others in the local population, probably in their relationship to a local land use pattern operating between two distinct biospheres.

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“…Sulphur isotopes are becoming increasingly utilized as an additional tool for bone dietary studies (e.g. Richards 8,9 ; Craig 10 ; Nehlich 11,12,13 ; Privat 14 ); in particular to distinguish between terrestrial and marine based diets. The data derived from the current study will contribute further knowledge to dietary practices of a marginal rural medieval settlement and explore whether or not there were any clear population influxes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-isotope analysis of the population of the lost medieval village of Auldhame, East Lothian, Scotland

Lamb

Melikian

Ives

et al. 2012

J. Anal. At. Spectrom.

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This study is one of only a handful to combine strontium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data for medieval human remains, in this case from individuals buried in a cemetery in the remote Scottish coastal village of Auldhame, which was abandoned in the 17 th century AD.The strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel suggests that the group was predominantly comprised of a local, static population and thus this allows the examination of the dietary habits of a remote coastal community. The combination of relatively high nitrogen isotope values with relatively low carbon isotope values within bone collagen suggests little marine protein in the diet, which is unusual given the coastal location. The community may have been consuming some freshwater fish or omnivores (pigs fed on animal diets), but also we suggest that the combination of isotope values could be explained by soil improvement methods.Some evidence for soil deepening at the site, and by association manuring, suggests the consumption of cereals was important to the diet, and may explain the high nitrogen values found in combination with terrestrial carbon isotope values. This combination of dietary isotopes has previously been suggested to be unusual for the medieval period, but we propose it is perhaps more common than originally conceived. As there are few previous multi-isotope studies from Scottish medieval assemblages on this scale, the study provides an opportunity to construct a picture of medieval and early post-medieval life in rural Scotland.

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Application of sulphur isotope ratios to examine weaning patterns and freshwater fish consumption in Roman Oxfordshire, UK

Cited by 110 publications

References 78 publications

Sex‐biased weaning and early childhood diet among middle holocene hunter–gatherers in Central California

Sex‐biased weaning and early childhood diet among middle holocene hunter–gatherers in Central California

British Iron Age chariot burials of the Arras culture: a multi-isotope approach to investigating mobility levels and subsistence practices

Multi-isotope analysis of the population of the lost medieval village of Auldhame, East Lothian, Scotland

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