Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Previous studies have demonstrated that stable carbon- and nitrogen-isotope ratios of bone collagen can be used to distinguish marine and terrestrial components of prehistoric human diet. However, when this method was first applied to prehistoric Bahamians, their bone-collagen nitrogen-isotope ratios were found to be outside the ranges observed for other coastal populations that ate substantial quantities of marine foods. This study examines in detail the distributions of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in Bahamian food chains. Our results indicate that the unique isotopic signature in bone collagen of prehistoric Bahamians reflects the enrichment of 13C and the depletion of 15N in seagrass and coral-reef communities relative to other oceanic environments. The results also demonstrate that bone-collagen 13C/12C ratios can be used to distinguish marine from terrestrial contributions in the prehistoric Lucayan Taino diet, and that 15N/14N ratios serve to identify the use of certain marine food groups. This approach should prove useful for the study of consumption practices in other tropical coral-reef environments and as a method for evaluating theoretically predicted optimal diets.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.