Dentine sequential isotope analyses for the study of past animal populations

And what about dentine? Challenges and possibilities of dentine sequential isotope analyses for the study of past animal populations

Intra-tooth isotopic analyses are now widely implemented in current zooarchaeological studies, particularly for their ability to reconstruct animals’ life histories at seasonal scale. While these approaches have been extensively applied to the mineral phase of the enamel, their implementation in dentine has generally been avoided, despite the potential this tissue offers to analyze collagen with high temporal resolution.

This presentation will discuss part of the research carried out during my PhD, which focused on the application of sequential dentine analyses (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) to high-crowned bovid molars. Modern experimental sheep specimens were used, and a new sampling protocol was developed to address the main challenge of these analyses: adapting to the dentine growth pattern to obtain high-resolution isotopic data. An ongoing study on archaeological bovine teeth will also be presented.

The talk is free and open to all. Access is via the link to the side of this event listing webpage.