Complexities of Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Biogeochemistry in Ancient Freshwater Ecosystems: Implications for the Study of Past Subsistence and Environmental Change

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of human and animal tissues have become an important means of studying both anthropogenic and natural food webs in aquatic ecosystems. Within the rapidly expanding field of human and animal paleodietary analyses, archaeologists routinely incorporate isotopic data from fish, birds, and aquatic mammals into their interpretations of ancient freshwater resources use; however, these studies rarely consider...