Abstract
This paper examines the dietary habits and mobility of an Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 BCE) population from Bakla Tepe (West Anatolia in the İzmir region). The research utilises the results of stable isotope analyses of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N), and sulphur (δ34S) from human bone collagen in conjunction with published archaeological data. Intra-population issues of dietary habits such as possible social divisions (e.g. between sexes, ages, and socio-economic status) were addressed. The sample population from Bakla Tepe consists of 19 adults and no subadults. In total, there are 8 males (42.1%) and 11 females (57.9%). There are two distinct and separate period cemeteries; from the Early Bronze Age I period, 7 individuals were sampled, with 12 individuals sampled from the Early Bronze Age II/III period. The results show that during the 3rd millennium BCE, dietary habits were generally homogeneous and became more so in the latter part of the millennium. Diets were predominantly terrestrial C3 based. There is one individual whose δ34S value suggests that she moved to the settlement from a location further inland and another whose δ34S value suggests that she may have moved to the settlement from nearer the coast.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Annabell Reiner, Reba MacDonald, and Sven Steinbrenner for assistance with the stable isotope measurements. We would also like to thank Dr. Jennifer Jones for identification of the faunal remains and the research staff of the Anthropology Department of Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, for providing support with access to and analysis of the osteological material. Thank you to Dr. Michele Massa for producing the map in Fig. 1. The author B. Irvine would also like to personally thank Professor Dr. Reinhard Bernbeck for all of his help and advice during this research and also Professor Dr. Michael Richards for permitting access to the isotope laboratories and for his help and advice with the isotope measurements. Thank you as well to the late Professor Dr. Hayat Erkanal and Dr. Turhan Özkan, the site directors of the excavation from which the material originated, for granting permission to work on the material. We would finally like to sincerely thank the reviewers for their comments and suggestions which helped to improve this paper.
Funding
This study was funded by the BIAA postdoctoral fellowship (which author B. Irvine held at time of writing). Initial sampling was funded by the Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştirma Kurumu (TÜBİTAK)-2216: Research Fellowship Programme for International Researchers; the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, where the isotope research (for collagen extraction and carbon and nitrogen analysis) was conducted, and Simon Fraser University, Canada, where the sulphur isotope analysis was conducted.
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Irvine, B., Erdal, Y.S. Multi-isotopic analysis of dietary habits and mobility at third millennium BC Bakla Tepe, West Anatolia. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 12, 111 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01078-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01078-2