A large-scale environmental strontium isotope baseline map of Portugal for archaeological and paleoecological provenance studies

Hannah F. James, Malte Willmes, Shaun Adams, Kate Mathison, Andrea Ulrichsen, Rachel Wood, Antonio C. Valera, Catherine J. Frieman, Rainer Grun

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    Abstract

    Strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) provide valuable information to help reconstruct past mobility. For the analysis of archaeological tooth enamel to provide a direct assessment of mobility, a comparison to the baseline 87Sr/86Sr in a region is required. In this study, a large-scale 87Sr/86Sr baseline of Portugal is created based on 151 paired plant and soil leachate samples combined with previously published data (20 additional plant and 33 additional soil leachate sites). Spatial patterns of 87Sr/86Sr are evident, following Portugal's geology and terrain, with higher 87Sr/86Sr in the granite dominated north and further inland. Influences from sea spray are observed along the coastal regions of the country. The bioavailable strontium range for Portugal is 0.70575–0.73487, and paired plant-soil leachate site measurements show a strong positive relationship. Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK) alongside mean 87Sr/86Sr per geological unit are used to provide predictive surfaces for bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr. We find that the addition of archaeological site-specific measurements is required in archaeological mobility studies to ensure local-scale 87Sr/86Sr variation is captured, illustrated in this study using the Late Middle Neolithic to Early Bronze Age site of Perdigões. The bioavailable strontium isoscape for Portugal provides a baseline map for future archaeological and palaeoecological studies in this region and contributes to the global efforts to map strontium isotope variability.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number105595
    Number of pages10
    JournalJournal of Archaeological Science
    Volume142
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2022

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    Funding was provided by the ARC Discovery Project DP160100811 ?Beyond migration and diffusion: The prehistoric mobility of people & ideas? (Frieman, Grun, Spriggs, Wood, Duval, Valera). Thank you to Jian-Xin Zhao, Yuexing Feng and Ai Nguyen of the Radiogenic Isotope Facility at the University of Queensland for their analytical assistance. H.F. James would like to acknowledge support from ERC Starting Grant LUMIERE (Landscape Use and Mobility In EuRope ? Bridging the gap between cremation and inhumation), funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 948913. Many thanks to our three reviewers for your helpful and constructive comments on the manuscript.

    Funding Information:
    Funding was provided by the ARC Discovery Project DP160100811 \u201CBeyond migration and diffusion: The prehistoric mobility of people & ideas\u201D (Frieman, Grun, Spriggs, Wood, Duval, Valera). Thank you to Jian-Xin Zhao, Yuexing Feng and Ai Nguyen of the Radiogenic Isotope Facility at the University of Queensland for their analytical assistance. H.F. James would like to acknowledge support from ERC Starting Grant LUMIERE (Landscape Use and Mobility In EuRope \u2013 Bridging the gap between cremation and inhumation), funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 948913 . Many thanks to our three reviewers for your helpful and constructive comments on the manuscript.

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

    Keywords

    • Isoscape
    • Mobility
    • Archaeology
    • Soil
    • Plant
    • Kriging

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