When collagen fails: Zinc isotopes unlock Sumerian lifeways in southern Mesopotamia
Giaccari M, Romano L, Soncin S, Panella S, Alhaique F, D'Agostino F, Jaouen K, Tafuri MA.
Abstract
Understanding ancient diets is one of the keys to reconstructing lifeways and social structures. In what are now arid regions like southern Mesopotamia, poor collagen preservation has long hindered direct dietary reconstructions. Here, we apply zinc isotope analysis to human and faunal dental enamel from the third-millennium BCE site of Abu Tbeirah (southern Iraq), offering a method to overcome this limitation. Combined with carbon and oxygen isotopes and trace element ratios (Ba/Ca and Sr/Ca), zinc isotopes reveal an omnivorous diet based on C3 cereals, terrestrial animal protein, and possibly freshwater resources, with no evidence of marine fish consumption. These findings offer individual-level insight into subsistence practices, early-life nutrition, and animal management within a nonelite population in early-urbanized southern Mesopotamia. Keywords: ancient diet, human–animal interactions, multiproxy isotope analysis, carbon and oxygen isotopes, weaning practices
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