Dietary¹⁴C reservoir effects and the chronology of prehistoric burials at Sakhtysh, central European Russia

Abstract

We present the first robust radiocarbon (14C) chronology for prehistoric burial activity at Sakhtysh, in European Russia, where nearly 180 inhumations attributed to Lyalovo and Volosovo pottery-using hunter-gatherer-fishers represent the largest known mortuary populations of these groups. Past attempts at 14C dating were restricted by poor preservation and limited understanding of diet and dietary 14C reservoir effects (DREs). We obtained 32 new AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) 14C dates on human petrous bones. Dietary stable isotopes (delta 13C, delta 15N) for all AMS-dated human samples allow us to propose a novel DRE correction model, using differences in 14C, delta 13C and delta 15N from bones and teeth of the same individuals to predict DREs of up to c.900 14C years. Our chronological model for 40 individuals dates Lyalovo burials to the early 5th millennium cal BC, and Volosovo burials to the mid-4th to early 3rd millennium. It reveals a previously unrecognised shift in the Volosovo subsistence economy at c.3300 cal BC, coinciding with a reorientation of trade networks, and shows that the last burial at Sakhtysh was the only one in a crouched position, which coincided with the beginning of Fatyanovo practices, the regional expression of the Yamnaya/Corded Ware expansion.