Toward an Integrated Isotope Zooarchaeology

Abstract

The recent explosion of stable isotope analyses of ancient faunal remains is opening new vistas into understanding the complex subsistence, social, and political facets of the human–animal relationship traditionally investigated through zooarchaeological analytical approaches. This chapter traces a path of increasing connectivity between the disciplines of stable isotope biogeochemistry and zooarchaeology, a process initially facilitated by their shared interest in faunal remains and also discipline-specific methodological and technological developments that opened new areas of archaeological inquiry. While a disciplinary convergence on research questions concerned with Neanderthal subsistence provided an important touchstone between zooarchaeology and stable isotope analysis, zooarchaeological research agendas investigating animal domestication processes and documenting ancient animal management strategies in particular provided the critical spark that propelled stable isotopic approaches toward questions engaged with understanding how humans manipulated animal resources for their own subsistence and social needs. This chapter further argues that an integrated isotope zooarchaeology is defined by an intrinsic scalar analytical flexibility that provides mutually contextualized multi-scalar insights into human behaviors at the levels of individual, household, and community previously unattainable by either zooarchaeology or stable isotope analysis alone. A further tempering of isotope zooarchaeology through explicit use of theoretical frameworks that draw from human behavioral ecology, practice theory, and cultural niche construction theory is now needed to provide coherent frames of reference that incorporate zooarchaeological and stable isotopic datasets to better understand the human use of animals for daily subsistence, social negotiation, ritual activity, and political purposes.