| Abstract: |
\babstract\b Criteria for a model for evaluating elements as potential paleodietary indicators are dervied from information on the strucuture, remodeling, and mineral composition of bone. Eleven elements- aluminum, barium, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, phosphorus, strontium, and zinc- are discussed as potential dietary indicators from the standpoint of physiology and mineral metabolism. The strontium model, which remains the only valid physiologically based model for use in bone chemistry studies in archaeology, is also discussed and it is from the principles inherent in this model that model presented is derived. The basic tenets of this paper are (1) without a firm physiological basis, no element is a valid paleodietary indicator
(2) there is great deal of misuse of elemental data in archaeological bone chemistry that is fundamentally unscientific
and (3) based on current knowledge, only barium and strontium can be considered valid paleodietary indicators. \bGREAT PAPER ALL AROUND FOR THEORETICAL BASIS\b pg 1 variability in concentrations of different skeletal parts (Grupe 1988
Klepinger et al 1986
Lambert et al 1985) pg 2 procedures for identifying and removing contaminants from samples (Lambert et al 1990, 1991
Price 1989
Price et al 1992
Schoeninger et al 1989
Sillen 1986, 1988, 1989
Sillen and LeGeros 1991) use of feeding experiments to chart the behavior of potential dietary discrimination (Klepinger 1990
Lambert and Weydert-Homeyer 1993
Price et al 1985a, 1986
Weydert 1990) biological factors that create discrimination in values from diet to bone (Kruger and Sullivan 1984
Runia 1988) some that raised question whether it can be used at all in archaeological case studies (Ambrose 1987
Boaz and Hempel 1978
Hancock et al 1989) These 11 elements are chosen for three reasons: 1) they tend to occur in biolgogical bone (with the possible exception of manganese) in level that are relatively easy to measure by techniques such as emmission psectroscopy 2) all of them save strontium and barium are essential nutrients, and thus are importna tin the diet of humans 3) most of these elements (other than barium and strontium) have been erroneously utilized as paleodietary studies \b[refute the "free-for-all" approach in studying numerous trace elements\b pg 22 states that at this time in only two potential elemental dietary indicators: stronium and barium. Other are possible but the physiological and biochemical data has not been developed.
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