Congratulations to BAP graduate student Corrie Hyland, who was awarded best student paper at the recent Radiocarbon and Diet Conference, held June 20-23 at the University of Oxford!
Along with the title, Corrie was awarded 100GBP (kindly sponsored by IonPlus)!
Title: Using Amino Acid Isotope Values to Determine Freshwater Reservoir Offsets
Authors: Corrie Hyland, Amy Styring, Rick Schulting, Andrzej Weber
Abstract: Previous paired dating studies of early hunter-gatherer populations from the Upper Lena and Little Sea microregions in Cis-Baikal have identified large freshwater reservoir offsets. However, each microregion has a different relationship between the bulk stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values from human bone collagen and known freshwater reservoir offset ages. The freshwater and terrestrial food sources in these microregions show large within-species variation and overlapping bulk δ13C and δ15N values that lower the precision of FRE correction equations. Amino acid-specific stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were applied in a small pilot study to determine whether these techniques could better distinguish freshwater from terrestrial contributions to human diets and provide stronger correlations to known paired dating offsets. This research examined Δ13CGly-Phe, Δ13CVal-Phe, δ13CPhe vs δ13CVal values and found no clear, direct relationship to FRE offset ages. Our current research highlights the importance of understanding local baseline values when interpreting amino acid-specific stable isotope values and the dangers of interpreting these data based solely on direct comparisons to the average human diets presented in Honch et al. (2012).
Read about Corrie’s research here
Congratulations, Corrie!