| In order to reconstruct the diets of traditional island peoples, I analyzed the stable isotope signatures of carbon (delta13C) and nitrogen (delta15N) from bone collagen and bone apatite carbonate in 102 prehistoric skeletons from the West Indies. These samples represent 18 archaeological sites on 13 different islands. I also analyzed the same stable isotopes in numerous samples of plants and animals, both marine and terrestrial, that potentially were consumed by prehistoric West Indians. My results show that peoples of the Saladoid period (ca. 400 B.C. to A.D. 600) and of the Ostionoid/Post-Saladoid period (A.D. 600 to 1500) had fundamentally similar diets that included roughly comparable components of marine and terrestrial foods. The main differences in prehistoric diets among sites can be summarized as follows: peoples on larger, less isolated, more biotically and geologically diverse islands had a larger terrestrial component in their diets than those peoples living on smaller, more isolated islands with less complex biotas and geomorphologies. These differences are related to variables in the intrinsic physical and biological properties of individual islands. These variables are accommodated within the theoretical framework of island biogeography. For example, if one considers the large islands of the Greater Antilles as reference points (source areas) for other smaller and/or more isolated islands (Bahamas, Lesser Antilles), the larger, less isolated islands provided richer, more reliable sources of terrestrial foods than the smaller, more isolated islands where marine foods dominated prehistoric diets. Similarly, low, limestone islands provided early West Indian peoples with a relatively depauperate terrestrial fauna to exploit, as well as marginal soil quality for agriculture. Larger, higher islands, typically volcanic and/or metamorphic in origin, provided better soils as well as more diverse faunas that enhanced the terrestrial component of prehistoric diets. The data from stable isotopes may or may not agree with those from zooarchaeology in reconstructing prehistoric diets. A comprehensive approach that considers carefully collected information from stable isotopes, zooarchaeology, and plant macrofossils is recommended as the best overall approach to estimating the diet of prehistoric peoples. Among these three types of data, stable isotope analysis is shown to yield internally consistent results that are very useful for inter-site and inter-island comparisons. |
