Strontium isotope analysis of archaeological skeletons has provided useful and exciting results in archaeology in the last 20 years, particularly by characterizing past human migration and mobility. This review covers the biogeochemical background, including the origin of strontium isotope compositions in rocks, weathering and hydrologic cycles that transport strontium, and biopurification of strontium from to soils, to plants, to animals and finally into the human skeleton, which is subject to diagenesis after burial. Spatial heterogeneity and mixing relations must often be accounted for, rather than simply ``matching'' a measured strontium isotope value to a presumed single-valued geologic source. The successes, limitations and future potential of the strontium isotope technique are illustrated through case studies from geochemistry, biogeochemistry, ecology and archaeology.

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Strontium Isotopes from the Earth to the Archaeological Skeleton: A Review

In this chapter, we have tried to review the recent literature on trace elements in rivers, in particular by incorporating the results derived from recent ICP-MS measurements. We have favored a “field approach” by focusing on studies of natural hydrosystems. The basic questions which we want to address are the following: What are the trace element levels in river waters? What controls their abundance in rivers and fractionation in the weathering + transport system? Are trace elements, like major elements in rivers, essentially controlled by source-rock abundances? What do we know about the chemical speciation of trace elements in water? To what extent do colloids and interaction with solids regulate processes of trace elements in river waters? Can we relate the geochemistry of trace elements in aquatic systems to the periodic table? And finally, are we able to satisfactorily model and predict the behavior of most of the trace elements in hydrosystems?

Trace Elements in River Waters

Chemical composition of suspended sediments in World Rivers: New insights from a new database

Diagenetic constraints on the use of cerium anomalies as palaeoseawater redox proxies: an isotopic and REE study of Cambrian phosphorites

The Neoproterozoic oxygenation event: Environmental perturbations and biogeochemical cycling

Rare earth elements and Sr and Nd isotopic compositions of dissolved and suspended loads from small river systems in the Vosges mountains (France), the river Rhine and groundwater

To assess rare earth element (REE) distribution, fractionation during weathering processes and river transport, a sequential extraction procedure was applied to 36 river sediments collected from different rivers in Argentina, Brazil, France and Morocco. The results show that labile REE fractions are mainly linked to carbonates, iron oxides or organic matter according to the river. Moreover the leached REE do not behave as a coherent group: middle REE are mainly bound to carbonates or organic matter, whereas light REE (except cerium) are preferentially linked to organic matter and heavy REE and cerium are associated with iron oxides.

Jean Samuel

Papers

Rare earth elements and Sr and Nd isotopic compositions of dissolved and suspended loads from small river systems in the Vosges mountains (France), the river Rhine and groundwater

REE distribution pattern in river sediments: partitioning into residual and labile fractions

Distribution des terres rares dans les sédiments fluviaux : fractionnement entre les phases labiles et résiduelles