Ancient Food Webs: Reconstructing Human-Environment Interactions via Stable Isotopes

Stable isotope methods play a key role in reconstructing important issues such as ancient human diet, migration, the origin and domestication of plants and animals and the relationships between humans and the environment. As research progresses, accurately identifying the role of different food resources in human and animal diets has become a new challenge. By measuring the stable isotope data of co-occurring plants, animals, and humans from archaeological sites, food webs establish the local ecosystem at that time and provide a novel pathway and method for accurately assessing the contributions of different food resources. At the same time, through the construction of food webs, humans are placed within a more comprehensive environmental context, offering new possibilities for better understanding the interactions between humans and the environment.

This Research Topic seeks to systematically explore the applications of stable isotope food web analysis (including but not limited to δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, and 87Sr/86Sr) in bio-archaeology, focusing on three core thematic areas:

- How we can study food webs connected to human activities and what “food web” means across different contexts.

- Exploring food web patterns across different microenvironments.

- How examining food web details can help us interpret human diet and behavior.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Stable isotopes Food webs Bioarchaeology Palaeodiets Human-environment interactions

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