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Interpreting Past Human Diets Using Stable Isotope Mixing Models

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Abstract

Palaeodietary reconstruction using stable isotope analysis is becoming increasingly common, as is the practice of using mixing models to quantify ancient dietary compositions. However, many archaeologists may be unaware of the complexities and pitfalls of stable isotope mixing models (SIMMs). This study serves to provide an overview of the basic principles of SIMMs, evaluates the performances of several of the most commonly used SIMM software packages, and offers some field-specific guidelines for the application of SIMMs in archaeological contexts. We present a series of simulated and published archaeological data to demonstrate and evaluate the different types of SIMMs. We compared the outputs of linear mixing models, simple probabilistic models (IsoSource), and conditional probabilistic models (FRUITS and MixSIAR). Our results show that each mixing model has its pros and cons, and archaeologists should select the best model based on a number of factors, including familiarity with coding languages, sample characteristics (i.e. sample size and normality) of the consumer groups, and research questions.

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Notes

  1. Hyperparameters (α) are also called priors in FRUITS and in the literature more generally. In order to differentiate this from other priors, α will be referred to as hyperparameters throughout this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Drs. Eric Guiry and Leia Mion for allowing us to use their data to evaluate the performances of different SIMMs. We also thank Dr. Estelle Herrscher and the four anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments on this manuscript.

Availability of Data and Material

All archaeological data are obtained from published reports. All simulated data are provided in the Supplementary files.

Funding

CC is supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Project-ANR-17-CE27-0023 “NEOGENRE”). PS is supported by the Canada Research Chairs program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EA – Eco-anthropologie (UMR 7206), Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France

    Christina Cheung

  2. UMR 7269, CNRS, Minist Culture, LAMPEA, Aix Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Christina Cheung

  3. Department of Anthropology, Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive, Peterborough, Ontario, K9L 0G2, Canada

    Paul Szpak

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Correspondence to Christina Cheung.

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Supplementary Information

Online Resource 1:

R scripts. (DOCX 24.5 kb)

Online Resource 2:

Simulated data and modelling results for case study 1 – hypothetical coastal populations. (XLSX 126 kb)

Online Resource 3:

Data and modelling results for case study 2 – Yinxu. (XLSX 19 kb)

Online Resource 4:

Data and modelling results for case study 3 – Missignac-Saint Gilles le Vieux. (XLSX 22 kb)

Online Resource 5:

Model output comparison for case study 4 – error structures and hyperparameters. (XLSX 71 kb)

Online Resource 6:

Examples of graphical outputs from IsoSource, FRUITS, and MixSIAR, respectively, demonstrated using the TM model from the first case study (hypothetical coastal population). IsoSource: the five histograms described the distributions of the isotopically feasible contributions of the five sources to the mixture (human isotopic values): a) reindeer; b) deer; c) seal; d) walrus; marine fish. FRUITS: estimated dietary compositions of individuals 1 (f) and 8 (g) shown as boxplots; probability distributions of the five sources to individuals 1 (h) and 8 (i); and j) boxplots showing the differences in the probable amount of deer consumed by the 10 analysed individuals. MixSIAR: k) IsoSpace plot with all the source and consumer data (TDF corrected); l) posterior density distributions of proportional contributions of the five sources to the consumers (as a group); m) matrix plots – source histograms on the diagonal, contour plots of the relationship between the sources on the upper diagonal, and the correlation between the sources on the lower diagonal. (DOCX 1561 kb)

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Cheung, C., Szpak, P. Interpreting Past Human Diets Using Stable Isotope Mixing Models. J Archaeol Method Theory 28, 1106–1142 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09492-5

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