Yes / Objectives Isotope ratio analyses of dentine collagen were used to characterize short-term changes in physiological status (both dietary status and biological stress) across the life course of children afforded special funerary treatment. Materials and Methods Temporal sequences of δ15N and δ13C isotope profiles for incrementally-forming dentine collagen were obtained from deciduous teeth of 86 children from four early-medieval English cemeteries. Thirty-one were interred in child-specific burial clusters, and the remainder alongside adults in other areas of the cemetery. Isotope profiles were categorized into four distinct patterns of dietary and health status between the final prenatal months and death. Results Isotope profiles from individuals from the burial clusters were significantly less likely to reflect weaning curves, suggesting distinctive breastfeeding and weaning experiences. This relationship was not simply a factor of differential age at death between cohorts. There was no association of burial location with stage of weaning at death, nor with isotopic evidence of physiological stress at the end of life. Discussion This study is the first to identify a relationship between the extent of breastfeeding and the provision of child-specific funerary rites. Limited breastfeeding may indicate the mother had died during or soon after birth, or that either mother or child was unable to feed due to illness. Children who were not breastfed will have experienced a significantly higher risk of malnutrition, undernutrition and infection. These sickly and perhaps motherless children received care to nourish them during early life, and were similarly provided with special treatment in death. / University of Sheffield Early Career Researcher Scheme by a grant awarded to ECA in 2014-15.

Yes / Background: stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) in bone and dentine collagen have been used for over 30 years to estimate palaeodiet, subsistence strategy, breastfeeding duration and migration within burial populations. Recent developments in dentine microsampling allow improved temporal resolution for dietary patterns. Aim: We propose a simple method which could be applied to human teeth to estimate chronological age represented by dentine microsamples in the direction of tooth growth, allowing comparison of dietary patterns between individuals and populations. The method is tested using profiles from permanent and deciduous teeth of two individuals. Subjects and methods: using a diagrammatic representation of dentine development by approximate age for each human tooth (based on the Queen Mary University of London Atlas) (AlQahtani et al., 2010), we estimate the age represented by each dentine section. Two case studies are shown: comparison of M1 and M2 from a 19th century individual from London, England, and identification of an unknown tooth from an Iron Age female adult from Scotland. Results and conclusions: The isotopic profiles demonstrate that variations in consecutively-forming teeth can be aligned using this method to extend the dietary history of an individual, or identify an unknown tooth by matching the profiles.

Changes in marine production play a key role in determining the trophic structure of the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This is a region of great environmental fluctuations due to modern, historical, and paleo-environmental variability recorded throughout the Holocene. These fluctuations are recorded in the bone collagen of the marine mammals that reside in these waters. Marine mammal remains from four previously excavated archaeological deposits on Unalaska Island, Alaska are used as a proxy for marine production changes throughout the Holocene (4,500 BP to 350 BP). Historic and modern samples from museum collections, subsistence harvests, and previously published data provide a distinct contrast to prehistoric marine mammals. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (δ13C and δ15N) derived from marine mammal bone collagen correlate to changes in marine production and food web length. The 13C and 15N of prehistoric marine mammal taxa covary through the Holocene, indicating no trophic level change with fluctuations in 13C. Changes in δ13C and δ15N of marine mammals are correlated to periods of environmental fluctuations within the Holocene. Cooler climatic periods (transitional interval, beginning of the Neoglacial Interval, and Little Ice Age) show enrichedδ13C, reflecting primary production increase, compared to warmer climate periods (end of the Neoglacial Interval into the Medieval Climatic Anomaly). Unidentified cetacean bones are isotopically distinguishable into orders Mysticeti (baleen) and Odontoceti (toothed) due to different feeding ecologies. The δ13C depletion in modern pinnipeds compared to prehistoric is likely caused by the effect of increased anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 and resulting decrease in primary production.