Animal and Human Data from Europe

COMPARISON OF ANIMAL AND HUMAN DATA FROM EUROPE 

The discussion above lacks basic data the purpose of our inventory is mainly to raise issues that need to be addressed in the future, and to try to develop a framework that relates these issues to each other, than to supply this lacking data. Because of that, the question of whether aspects of isotopic variation discussed above can be unequivocally identified in the archaeological record in Europe cannot yet be answered. We can, however, state that some form of patterning (as opposed to random variation) can often be observed. In many cases we observe patterns without knowing the precise causes, conceivably because they are the result of more than one factor e g., a climatic and a cultural effect. 

Below we will describe some individual cases where we think that may be possible to pinpoint the cause for isotopic variations, and will try to give a general idea of human variations that can be found in Europe. The characterization will not be comprehensive, given the fact that we have only recently started analyzing and comparing isotopic data across Europe, but we hope that a start can be made with matching actually observed variations and the causes behind them. 

Before we could begin to compare the 8 C values from different regions of Europe we needed to climate-correct the values, because natural climatic differences result in different 8 C values for different regions, in plants (Fig. 3.1) and in bone collagen (VanKlinken et al. 1994). Climate correction 

The regression line for wood, taken from Van Klinken et al. (1994) was used to calculate expected values, which were then used to climate-correct our bone values. The relationship we find in wood can be expressed as  

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