A Review On The Applications Of Carbon And Nitrogen Isotopic Analysis In Chinese Archaeology

Food is the first necessity of the people. Diet activity is one of the most basic human activities which supply the material basis for human. Human diet is not only closely related to the natural environment but also closely linked to social culture. So the study on ancient people’s dietary can supply a great deal of information, such as the paleoenvironment, climatic conditions, ancient human society, social development progress and so on. So the reconstruction of ancient diets is often a focal component in Archaeology and very significant for the reconstructing of ancient environment and reconstruction of human history.There are many methods for reconstructing paleodiet, such as Archaeozoology and Archaeobotany, living and production artifacts, ethnographic materials, literature and so on. However, those methods are qualitative and it’s hard to quantitative estimate the proportions of dietary components. C、N stable isotopes analysis can make up for this deficiency, which is now becoming one of the leading and major reconstruction of the ancient diet of Biological Archaeology.In our country, the utility of stable isotopes analysis in archaeological research began in1980s. Reviewing this30year’history, we have some basic understanding, and list as follow.Firstly, we have established a relatively perfect theoretical system in stable isotopes analysis of human bone. C,N stable isotopes have been both widely used to reconstruct the paleodiet.Secondly, in China, majority of the bone samples for stable isotopes studies were selected from the long bones, especially the middle portion of the lower limbs, since those part are so compact and solid that can preserved well even through a long time. The size of selected bone samples are usually3cubic centimeters large.Thirdly, the bone collagen extraction methods are basically same in our country. Although there are some differences in detail, in most of experiment researchers used the "acid-alkali-acid" method. Further more,those differences mostly due to the improvement of the collagen extraction method. For the moment, The method instituted by Jay et can not only gain purest collagen, but also ensure the yield of collagen.Fourthly, currently, there are about80sites in China that have made C,N human bone stable isotopes data. The age of most of the sites are mainly in the Middle Neolithic period to the Han Dynasty, and the location of the sites are mainly in north China. Using stable isotopes analysis. We not only reconstruct the ancient diets, also, we studied many other archaeological thesis, such as the origins of agriculture, animal domestication,cultural communication, ethnic integration, social differentiation, the relationship between men and women and so on.Fifthly, Although we have made great progress in stable isotopes analysis, there are still many problems that can’t be ignored. For example,in our country we rarely use bone apitate to reconstruct paleodiet. And because basic research is lack in our country, we know little about the local foodweb carbon and nitrogen isotope composition. In addition, some researchers got a misunderstanding of C,N stable isotope analysis theory. All those are worth the attention of scholars, and need to be improved in the further work.