CREATING BIOAVAILABLE STRONTIUM ISOTOPE BASELINES
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-03-01

The assessment of the strontium isotopic signature of a certain territory, and therefore the signature available to organisms growing and dwelling in that territory, is of fundamental importance for reconstructing animal mobility in the modern, archaeological and palaeontological contexts. It is a matter of interest, therefore, to establish a suitable, efficient and reliable way to perform this study. An estimate of the likely bioavailable strontium isotopes can be made from geological maps and literature, but rarely is this information adequate for determining the actual strontium isotopic bioavailable profile in the territory of interest. For this purpose, environmental samples of different kinds from the modern region are expressly collected and measured: rocks, soils, plants, local modern micro- or macro-mammals, snails, and insects are a few of the environmental samples collected and used for this purpose. This paper will review a series of different approaches existing in the literature with the aim of stimulating a discussion on the subject, heading towards the identification of the finest method to reconstruct bioavailable strontium profiles.


Author(s): Pellegrini, Maura (University of Oxford; University of Florence) - Copeland, Sandi (Los Alamos National Laboratory)