Differential diagenesis of strontium in archaeological human dental tissues

Abstract

. (2000) 'Di erential diagenesis of strontium in archaeological human dental tissues.', Applied geochemistry., 15 (5). pp. 687-694. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0883-2927(99)00069-4Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Applied geochemistry. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be re ected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A de nitive version was subsequently published in Applied geochemistry, 15(5), 2000, 10.1016/S0883-2927(99) 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-pro t 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. AbstractThe investigation of prehistoric human migration from the measurement of Sr-isotope ratios within preserved tissue is critically dependent on the preservation of biogenic Sr. A number of recent studies have involved isotope ratio measurements on samples of archaeological tooth and bone, but doubt remains as to the extent of diagenesis in various skeletal tissues and the effectiveness of procedures designed to decontaminate them. We have compared Sr abundance and isotope ratios in enamel and dentine from archaeological teeth in order to assess the integrity of the biogenic Sr signal preserved within the respective tissues. We conclude that enamel appears, in most cases, to be a reliable reservoir of biogenic Sr, but that dentine, and by implication bone, is not. The diagenesis of dentine is highly variable even between burials within a single site. For the majority of teeth, dentine diagenesis was not simply by addition of soil-derived Sr, but involved substantial, sometimes complete, turnover of the original biogenic material. We suggest that, for most of the samples investigated, current decontamination techniques may not have been effective in isolating biogenic Sr from dentine. Similar considerations are likely to apply to archaeological and fossil bone, but the possibility arises to use dentine and enamel measurements to assess the effectiveness of decontamination procedures which may then be used for bone.

Faunal migration in late‐glacial central Italy: implications for human resource exploitation

“…26 In teeth excavated from buried sediments, however, dentine usually contains more Sr than does enamel and this increase is normally coupled with 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios intermediate between the enamel value and that of the mobile strontium in the burial soil. 26,66,67 In most of our samples, dentine shows an elevated Sr concentration and a decrease in isotope ratio suggesting this tissue underwent secondary modifications during burial and that the mobile soil strontium was less radiogenic than that preserved in the enamel. Exceptions to this occurrence are the dentine samples of the two teeth from G. di Pozzo, which retain low Sr contents.…”

87Sr/86Sr and trace element mapping of geosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere interactions: A case study in Ireland

“…The surficial deposits in this region homogenise with the local bedrock signatures and thus, the measured signatures reflect the averaging of these two prominent geochemical reservoirs. Dentine can exchange varying proportions (15-100%) of biogenic Sr with soil from its burial environment making it unreliable as a reservoir of biogenic Sr (Budd et al, 2000). It is because of this exchangeability of Sr with soil that measured dentine 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values are sometimes used as a proxy for the local range in biosphere 87 Sr/ 86 Sr values (Evans et al, 2010;Montgomery et al, 2007).…”

A Multi-Isotope Investigation of Human and Dog Mobility and Diet in the Pre-Colonial Antilles

“…As strontium does not undergo significant isotopic fractionation as it passes from the soil into and through the food web (Price, Burton, and Bentley 2002), 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios do not vary significantly between different trophic levels. Dental enamel is the preferred tissue type for strontium isotope applications in archaeology as it is both highly resistant to diagenesis (Budd et al 2000;Hoppe, Koch, and Furutani 2003) and does not undergo remodelling. Hence enamel preserves the isotopic signal of the biogeochemical environment in the location where it was formed.…”