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HUMAN DIETARY COMPLEXITY IN TIANSHAN REGION AND THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON HUMAN PALEODIET

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2020

Haiyan Zhao Open the ORCID record for Haiyan Zhao [Opens in a new window] ,
Weijian Zhou ,
Hua Du ,
Peng Cheng Open the ORCID record for Peng Cheng [Opens in a new window] ,
Peter Weiming Jia  and
Wei Gong
Haiyan Zhao
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an710061, China Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center of IEECAS and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing100049, China
Weijian Zhou*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an710061, China Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center of IEECAS and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China CAS Center for Excellence in Quaternary Science and Global Change, Xi’an, China
Hua Du
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an710061, China Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center of IEECAS and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China
Peng Cheng
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an710061, China Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center of IEECAS and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China
Peter Weiming Jia
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, NSW2006, Australia
Wei Gong
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an710061, China Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Xi’an AMS Center of IEECAS and Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710061, China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: weijian@loess.llqg.ac.cn
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Abstract

With the popularization of carbon and nitrogen stable-isotope analysis methods used on archaeological samples from Xinjiang, the ancient paleodiet there has been revealed. However, research about isotopic analysis combined with environmental factors is rare, especially in such a variable and complex climate as that of the Tianshan region. We systematically analyzed the δ13C and δ15N results from animals and humans for dietary reconstruction of nomadic pastoralists from the Tianshan region during 3900–1200 cal BP. The δ13C and δ15N values for animals (sheep/goat, horse and cattle; n = 57) have a wide range from –20.8‰ to –14.7‰ for δ13C (–19.2 ± 1.0‰) and 3.2‰ to 9.9‰ for δ15N (7.0 ± 1.2‰). The δ13C and δ15N values from humans range from –19.6 to –12.3‰ (–16.0 ± 1.5‰) and 7.1 to 16.7‰ (–13.6 ± 1.5‰), respectively. The animal δ15N results indicate that the dry environment in the Tianshan region may result in elevated δ15N values. Synthesizing animal and human isotope results suggests that the inhabitants engaged in mobile herding economies subsidized with crops and wild animal meat from the Tianshan Mountains. In conclusion, we found that the regional environment closely relates to crop types, and temporal climate change has an effect on human dietary structure. Therefore, climate condition cannot be ignored when studying human paleodiet.

Keywords

climatehuman dietTianshan regionδ13Cδ15N
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 62 , Issue 5 , October 2020 , pp. 1489 - 1502
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© 2020 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona

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