El estudio de elementos traza en restos arqueozoológicos y su empleo en la reconstrucción de paleodietas

Abstract

Paleodieta reconstruction has been, for a lot time, an important item for Mexican anthropology, for the strong controversy that exists about if the Mesoamerican communities had access to enough sources of animal protein for their diet. From 1997, investigators of the Department of Studies of the Atmosphere of the ININ and the Paleozoology Laboratory of the IIA, UNAM, have gathered their efforts to adapt Mexican environmental conditions to a model that allows us to define levels of meat consumption starting from the accumulation of elements appearance in the bone (mainly Strontium and Zinc). The initial phase of study used wild archaeozoological samples from Teotihuacan Valley which were related quantity of elements appearance and trophic position. The results demonstrated a correspondence among both variables, therefore the possibility to use the pattern with organisms whose diet ignores, for example domestic species of human beings. When applying it to Teotihuacan dogs it was possible to define different patterns of meat consumption and their owners. The results demonstrate the potential of these investigations for the paleodiet recognition and their importance inside the bioanthropology and paleoanthropology.