Isotope analysis in archaeology

Isotope analysis has many applications in archaeology, from dating sites and artefacts, determination of past diets and migration patterns and for environmental reconstruction.

Information is determined by assessing the ratio of different isotopes of a particular element in a sample. The most widely studied and used isotopes in archaeology are carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, strontium and calcium.

An isotope is an atom of an element with an abnormal number of neutrons, changing their atomic mass. Isotopes can be subdivided into stable and unstable or radioactive. Unstable isotopes decay at a predictable rate over time. The first stable isotope was discovered in 1913, and most were identified by the 1930s. Archaeology was relatively slow to adopt the study of isotopes. Whereas chemistry, biology and physics, saw a rapid uptake in applications of isotope analysis in the 1950s and 1960s, following the commercialisation of the mass spectrometer. It wasn't until the 1970s, with the publication of works by Vogel and Van Der Merwe (1977) and DeNiro and Epstein (1978; 1981)  that isotopic analysis became a mainstay of archaeological study.