Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

Tracing Human Mobility with 87 Sr/ 86 Sr / 215
Figure 15.1. Map of the Antilles and the position of
Anse à la Gourde on Guadeloupe.
structure of apatite in tooth enamel protects the biogenic strontium isotope signature
from outside diagenetic influences, such as microbial attack and dissolution
by groundwater (Budd et al. 2000). Hence, enamel preserves the isotope signature
of an individual’s diet during childhood. Bone is constantly remodeled during life
and will tend to equilibrate with the dietary strontium consumed in vivo. Moreover,
the more porous crystal structure of bone makes it more vulnerable to postmortem
diagenetic alteration (Budd et al. 2000).
In order to distinguish locals from nonlocals, the local strontium signature
was determined and the distribution of strontium isotope ratios in the population
were analyzed. The local strontium signature was determined by means of the
analysis of enamel of rice rats and soil samples from the burial pits. In addition, a
simple statistical procedure as used by Wright was applied to analyze the distribution
of human enamel isotope ratios. Wright (2005) suggests that the local population
in a data set is best defined as the largest possible subset of samples that is
normally distributed, that is, is symmetrical around the mean and contains 95 percent
of cases within two standard deviations of the mean. We attempted to determine
this subset by iteratively excluding outliers from the data set, defined based
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