Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, USA.
University of South Carolina, Department of Anthropology, Columbia, South Carolina, USA.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2020 Jun;172(2):214-226. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24054. Epub 2020 Apr 3.
We compared δ N and δ C values from bone and dentine collagen profiles of individuals interred in famine-related and attritional burials to evaluate whether individuals in medieval London who experienced nutritional stress exhibit enriched nitrogen in bone and tooth tissue. Dentine profiles were evaluated to identify patterns that may be indicative of famine during childhood and were compared with the age of enamel hypoplasia (EH) formation to assess whether isotopic patterns of undernutrition coincide with the timing of physiological stress.
δ N and δ C isotope ratios of bone collagen were obtained from individuals (n = 128) interred in attritional and famine burials from a medieval London cemetery (c. 1120-1539). Temporal sequences of δ N and δ C isotope profiles for incrementally forming dentine collagen were obtained from a subset of these individuals (n = 21).
Results indicate that individuals from attritional graves exhibit significantly higher δ N values but no significant differences were found between burial types for the sexes. Analyses of dentine profiles reveal that a lower proportion of famine burials exhibit stable dentine profiles and that several exhibit a pattern of opposing covariance between δ N and δ C. EH were also observed to have formed during or after the opposing covariance pattern for some individuals.
The results of this study may reflect differences in diet between burial types rather than nutritional stress. Though nutritional stress could not be definitively identified using bone and dentine collagen, the results from dentine analysis support previous observations of biochemical patterns associated with nutritional stress during childhood.
我们比较了埋在饥荒相关和消耗性埋葬中的个体的骨和牙本质胶原谱中的 δ N 和 δ C 值，以评估经历营养压力的中世纪伦敦个体的骨和牙齿组织中是否存在富集氮。评估牙本质谱以确定可能表明儿童期饥荒的模式，并将其与釉质发育不全（EH）形成的年龄进行比较，以评估营养不良的同位素模式是否与生理应激的时间一致。
从中世纪伦敦公墓（约 1120-1539 年）中消耗性和饥荒埋葬的个体（n=128）中获得骨胶原的 δ N 和 δ C 同位素比值。从这些个体中的一部分（n=21）获得了逐渐形成的牙本质胶原的 δ N 和 δ C 同位素剖面的时间序列。
结果表明，来自消耗性坟墓的个体表现出明显更高的 δ N 值，但性别之间在埋葬类型之间没有发现显著差异。牙本质谱的分析表明，较少的饥荒埋葬表现出稳定的牙本质谱，并且有几个表现出 δ N 和 δ C 之间的反向协方差模式。EH 也被观察到在一些个体中形成于相反协方差模式期间或之后。
本研究的结果可能反映了埋葬类型之间饮食的差异，而不是营养压力。尽管无法使用骨和牙本质胶原明确确定营养压力，但牙本质分析的结果支持了先前关于与儿童期营养压力相关的生化模式的观察。
