Support for the Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz

University Of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides partial support for the 6th Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research, to be held on the campus of the Univ. of California, Santa Cruz in September 2001.The Advanced Seminars have been the premier forum for high-level discussion among anthropologists, geochemists, paleobiologists, and ecosystem scientists about the ways that fossil chemistry can be used to reconstruct the ecology, physiology, and migration patterns of humans and other mammals. Approximately 30 seminar participants will explore the diverse chemical approaches to hominid paleobiology. The list ranges from senior scientists to graduate students and from archaeologists to chemists, including speakers from 8 nations. The speakers will examine the following general topics: 1) how biological isotope signals are influenced by the effects of growth dynamics and post-mortem alteration, 2) how isotopes can be used to study the scale and pattern of human mobility, 3) new isotopic tools for studying hominid diets and habitat use, and 4) how physiology and nutritional status are reflected in the isotope composition of fossils. For example, several speakers will focus on the ecology and diet of australopithecines that are several million years old, determining the extent to which these relatives of modern humans consumed meat versus plants. Another set of speakers will focus on the diets and food processing technologies of modern humans over the past few thousand years. A number of speakers will examine shifts in human migration patterns and nutritional status, looking at the interplay between climate and cultural change as causal agents. As has been the case with all of previous seminars, we will publish a set of papers resulting from the presentations, preferably as a special issue of an archaeological journal. The publication will summarize important advances, making results available in a centralized format to both specialists and non-specialists. If the past is any guide, the chemical approaches to human and animal ecology, biogeochemistry, and environmental reconstruction explored in the publication will extend to workers in many other fields. For the past 30 years, anthropologists and archaeologists using chemical methods have been blazing a trail, a trail that has recently been picked up by wildlife biologists, terrestrial paleoclimatologists and global change researchers. The 6th Advanced Seminar on Paleodietary Research should continue this tradition.