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Sulfur isotope composition of organic tissues is a commonly used tool for gathering information about provenance and diet in archaeology and paleoecology. However, the lack of maps predicting sulfur isotope variations on the landscape limits the possibility to use this isotopic system in quantitative geographic assignments. We compiled a database of 2, sulfur isotope analyses in the collagen of archaeological human and animal teeth from individual locations across Western Europe.
We used this isotopic compilation and remote sensing data to apply a multivariate machine-learning regression, and to predict sulfur isotope variations across Western Europe. We used this novel sulfur isoscape and existing strontium and oxygen isoscapes of Western Europe to apply triple isotopes continuous-surface probabilistic geographic assignments to assess the origin of a series of teeth from local animals and humans from Brittany.
We accurately and precisely constrained the origin of these individuals to limited regions of Brittany. This approach is broadly transferable to studies in archaeology and paleoecology as illustrated in a companion paper Colleter et al. Isotopes have gained popularity for reconstructing the mobility of now-dead individuals or extinct animals in archaeology and paleoecology [ 1 — 5 ].
Isotopes are ubiquitous in organic tissues and vary predictably in the environment with biological and physical processes [ 6 ]. For several isotopic systems such as hydrogen, carbon or oxygen, the variations in isotopic abundances vary spatially, and these patterns are transmitted from inorganic e.
