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Reading between the lines: δ18O and δ13C isotopes of Unio elongatulus shell increments as proxies for local palaeoenvironments in mid-Holocene northern Syria

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Abstract

The much debated link between the collapse of urban centres in northern Syria and climate change at the end of third millennium bc is arguably one of the best known cases about human societies' struggle with the unpredictable nature of the Holocene. Fine-grained analyses of bioarchaeological materials offer excellent opportunities to overcome some of the difficulties encountered in such studies that tackle the effects of changing environmental and climatic conditions on human civilisations during the Holocene. This paper explains the results of a pilot study that uses archaeological freshwater clams (Unio elongatulus) from northern Syria as intermediary anthropobiogenic proxies to infer about the seasonal rhythms of local pluvial regimes and their possible fluctuations at the turn of the third millennium bc. Having secreted their CaCO3 in chemical and periodical accordance with the ambient environment and ending up at tell sites through human activity, these bivalves are suitable vessels of information about human ecology in northern Syria at the end of third millennium bc. Marked differences were observed between the isotopic (δ18O and δ13C) compositions of shells from Tell Mozan, an urban site that continued to exist throughout the rapid climate event, and those from Tell Leilan, which went into hiatus at the end of third millennium bc. These results have important implications about the potentially severe effects of micro-environmental differences on distinct human communities inhabiting the same culturally unified region.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded through a Smithsonian Institution postdoctoral fellowship. We are grateful to Suzan and İbrahim Cengiz Çevik and their family who welcomed Çakırlar to their home in Nusaybin on the Turkish-Syrian border and to Augusta MacMahon who hosted her at Tell Brak during her research in Syria. We are particularly indebted to Melinda Zeder for placing this research in the agenda of Smithsonian Human Ecology and Archaeobiology Program. Monica Doll provided the bivalve samples from Tell Mozan. Alice Bianchi and Anne Wissing provided the stratigraphic information for the samples from Tell Mozan. Robert Hershler provided guidance in using the National Museum of Natural History bivalve collections. Maia Dedrick assisted thick section preparations at the Museum Support Center of the Smithsonian Institution. Part of the thick sectioning work was supervised by Jeff Speakman. Scott Whittaker assisted the ESEM imaging at the National Museum of Natural History. Irvy Quitmyer provided help with probing the thick sections with the micromill at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Jason Curtis conducted the work at the mass spectrometry lab at the University of Florida, Gainesville. We are thankful to these people without whom this research would not have been possible. Support to attend this workshop came from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

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  1. Groningen Institute for Archaeology, Groningen University, Poststraat 6, 9712-ER, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Canan Çakirlar

  2. Dicle University, Department of Biology, Diyarbakır, Turkey

    Rιdvan Şeşen

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  1. Canan Çakirlar
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Correspondence to Canan Çakirlar.

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Çakirlar, C., Şeşen, R. Reading between the lines: δ18O and δ13C isotopes of Unio elongatulus shell increments as proxies for local palaeoenvironments in mid-Holocene northern Syria. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 5, 85–94 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-013-0125-8

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