Abstract

Archaeological strontium isotope investigations of the movement of peoples and animals rely on different methods to characterize a “local” strontium range. In geologically homogenous regions or regions where the creation of isoscapes using proxies is hampered, statistical methods are useful for identifying individuals likely to be local or non-local. We demonstrate how a multi-method approach can be used to evaluate local strontium isotope ranges in Bahrain, an archipelago in the Arabian Gulf. Combining the enamel samples analyzed for this paper (62 human and domesticate herbivore individuals) with previously published faunal ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values from Bahrain (20 domesticated herbivores), we found that different statistical methods identified different numbers of individuals as local and were predicated on different assumptions about the distribution of the data. Compared to the standard approach using 2σ of the sample mean, the statistical approaches used in this manuscript identified more potential non-local or securely non-local individuals. Between 18.5 and 44.4% of the non-human animals were identified as non-local, indicating the trade of animals and why using faunal (herbivore) samples alone to characterize a local range is problematic in trading centers. The identification of between 13.7 and 32.9% of the humans as non-local is consistent with other studies of movement in archaeological populations of the Gulf and makes sense given the prominent role of trade in Bahrain from the Early Dilmun to Islamic periods. We argue that statistical approaches to identifying probable non-locals can be used where detailed isoscape data are hard to obtain, but that such results need to be evaluated within the specific archaeological context.

中文翻译：

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使用 87Sr/86Sr 同位素分析识别当地人与非当地人：阿拉伯湾均质环境中的多种方法

摘要

对人类和动物运动的考古锶同位素研究依赖于不同的方法来表征“当地”锶范围。在地质同质区域或使用代理创建等景观受到阻碍的区域中，统计方法可用于识别可能是本地或非本地的个体。我们演示了如何使用多种方法来评估阿拉伯湾群岛巴林的当地锶同位素范围。将本文分析的牙釉质样本（62 名人类和驯化食草动物个体）与之前发表的巴林动物群⁸⁷ Sr/ ⁸⁶ Sr 值（20 只驯化食草动物）相结合，我们发现不同的统计方法将不同数量的个体识别为本地个体并进行预测关于数据分布的不同假设。与使用样本均值 2σ 的标准方法相比，本手稿中使用的统计方法识别了更多潜在的非本地或安全非本地个体。18.5% 至 44.4% 的非人类动物被确定为非本地动物，这表明动物贸易以及为什么仅使用动物（草食动物）样本来表征本地范围在交易中心是有问题的。13.7% 至 32.9% 的人类被认定为非本地人，这与其他关于海湾考古人口流动的研究一致，并且考虑到从早期迪尔蒙时期到伊斯兰时期巴林贸易的突出作用，这是有道理的。我们认为，在难以获得详细的等景观数据的情况下，可以使用统计方法来识别可能的非本地人，但此类结果需要在特定的考古背景下进行评估。