Exploring variation in infant feeding practices in Byzantine Greece using stable isotope analysis of dentin serial sections

Abstract

Infant feeding practices are explored in the early Byzantine Greek site of Nemea (5th–6th centuries) to better understand breastfeeding, weaning, and early diet of children in ancient Greece. Dentin serial sections were obtained from the permanent first molars and first premolars of 26 adults (seven males, eight females, and 11 of unknown sex) and analyzed for stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes. The isotopic data demonstrated that most individuals were breastfed and were fully weaned by around 2.6 years on average (range 1.8 to 3.6 years). A range of infant feeding practices was observed at Nemea. Some individuals were breastfed, while others were never breastfed or consumed breast milk for a short period of time, yet survived to adulthood. Sex‐based differences were not found as males and females were fully weaned at an average of 2.5 (1.9–3.3 years) and 2.4 (1.9–3.6 years) years, respectively. This is an important finding given the contradictory evidence of written sources regarding preferential treatment of male and female infants. Compared with traditional bulk analyses of subadult bone collagen, this study illustrates the utility of additional information obtained from dentin serial sections for capturing the nuances of infant feeding practices in ancient societies.

Investigating infant feeding strategies at Roman Bainesse through Bayesian modelling of incremental dentine isotopic data

“…A study at early Byzantine Nemea (No. = 25) showed that the majority of infants were fully weaned at approximately between [1.5–2] and [2.5–3] years apart from two outliers fully weaned at [1–1.5] and [4–4.5] years (after Kwok et al, 2018). As for populations that settled within the Roman Empire during the Migration Period, we compared our results with those from a Gepid cemetery in Archiud, Romania and an unspecified Germanic population settled in Niedernai, France.…”

“…Our results would indicate that this range may be extended even further, perhaps up to the age of five. Given a lack of incremental studies from other Roman sites, we compared our data with published examples from early medieval individuals from Britain (fifth and tenth centuries) (Beaumont et al, 2014, 2018), Greece (fifth to sixth centuries) (Kwok, Garvie‐Lok, & Katzenberg, 2018) and continental Europe (fourth to seventh centuries) (Crowder, Montgomery, Gröcke, & Filipek, 2019; Czermak, Schermelleh, & Lee‐Thorp, 2018). To make our results directly comparable with previous literature results, we also modelled these at 6‐month intervals using the Bayesian model OsteoBioR (see Section 2).…”

Blurred time resolution of tooth dentin serial sections

“…With recent developments in finer sectioning for human teeth, this method has been used to estimate weaning age and dietary change in individuals (e.g., Craig‐Atkins, Towers, & Beaumont, 2018; Greenwald, Eerkens, & Bartelink, 2016; Sandberg, Sponheimer, Lee‐Thorp, & Van Gerven, 2014; Yi et al, 2018). The amount of bioarchaeological research adopting the finer sectioning method is increasing, although some studies still adopt more coarse sectioning (e.g., Kwok, Garvie‐Lok, & Katzenberg, 2018; Pfeiffer, Sealy, Williamson, Forrest, & Lesage, 2017). Dentin sectioning has also been used to estimate age changes in the dental proteome (Procopio, Chamberlain, & Buckley, 2018).…”

Para a infância e mais além: uma perspectiva bioarqueológica da alimentação, estresse e morte em duas sociedades sambaquieiras

“…Tais valores mudam novamente à medida que outros alimentos passam a ser introduzidos e os valores de δ 15 N começam a cair até o fim do consumo total de leite, quando os valores se aproximam daqueles comumente encontrados nos indivíduos que consomem a dieta padrão do grupo (Katzenberg et al, 1996;Herring et al, 1998;Katzenberg, 2008;Tsutaya e Yoneda, 2015), conforme Figura 13. Dessa forma, as alterações do δ 15 N podem indicar a amamentação exclusiva, o início do consumo de outros alimentos e o início e fim do desmame (Dupras et al, 2001;Fuller et al, 2003Fuller et al, , 2006Katzenberg, 2008;Burt e Garvie-Lok, 2013;Kwok et al, 2018). Entretanto, os períodos de amamentação exclusiva e o início do desmame podem ser difíceis de serem observados devido à escala de tempo adquirida pelo colágeno ósseo e/ou pela suavidade das variações nos valores isotópicos.…”