Dietary stable isotope analysis on fifth–ninth century AD populations of Lepna and Viidumäe, Saaremaa Island, Estonia

Abstract

This paper presents the results of dietary stable isotope analyses performed on Migration Period (450–550 AD) and Pre-Viking Age (550–800 AD) populations of Lepna and Viidumäe, Saaremaa Island, Estonia. To date, research on dietary stable isotope analysis in Estonia has mainly focused on populations from other historical periods with an exclusion of material from the fifth to ninth centuries AD. Moreover, the research has been mainly conducted on populations from mainland Estonia, with three Stone Age groups from Saaremaa Island previously studied. The results of this paper suggest that the individuals buried at Lepna and Viidumäe had a diet of mainly terrestrial resources with minimal input from fresh- or brackish-water fish and marine resources. These results are supported by previous zooarchaeological material from Saaremaa, as well as additional analysis of the animal bones found in the Lepna grave. Although the dietary isotope values of Lepna and Viidumäe are similar to previous Estonian data from the Bronze Age (1750–500 BC) up to the Medieval Period (1225–1550 AD), the isotope values of these two populations show variations from the data collected from Iron Age sites in Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland thus far.

Keywords:

• Baltic Sea
• Iron Age
• zooarchaeology

Supplemental material

Supplemental S1 - Stable isotope data from Estonia.

Supplemental S2 - Stable isotope data from the Baltic Sea area.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Saaremaa Museum for granting permission to sample these remains. The authors are also grateful to Teresa Tomek for the permission to use her unpublished identifications and Holar Sepp for running the EA-IRMS at the Geology Department, University of Tartu.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Estonian Research Council personal research grant PSG492, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (EO), and Foundation Osiliana, as well as Estonian Research Council grant No PRG29 and PRG1027 and no. TT14 core facility NATARC.