Constructing bioavailable strontium baselines from the local to the multi-national scale using new and legacy data – challenges and limitations

As the use of strontium isotope analysis in archaeology to assess mobility and provenance of people, animals and objects expands, the need for robust baseline maps of bioavailable strontium to interpret these data increases. Isoscapes of varying scales, from archaeological site-specific, local, regional to national maps have been published. These isoscapes establish baselines from a variety of different archives; plants, soils, water, and archaeological and modern humans and fauna. The cost and effort to create these datasets is high, so previously published or legacy data is an important source to expand and increase the sampling density of baselines.