The influence of diet on the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in animals was investigated by analyzing animals grown in the laboratory on diets of constant nitrogen isotopic composition. 
The isotopic composition of the nitrogen in an animal reflects the nitrogen isotopic composition of its diet. The δ^(15)N values of the whole bodies of animals are usually more positive than those of their diets. Different individuals of a species raised on the same diet can have significantly different δ^(15)N values. The variability of the relationship between the δ^(15)N values of animals and their diets is greater for different species raised on the same diet than for the same species raised on different diets. Different tissues of mice are also enriched in ^(15)N relative to the diet, with the difference between the δ^(15)N values of a tissue and the diet depending on both the kind of tissue and the diet involved. The δ^(15)N values of collagen and chitin, biochemical components that are often preserved in fossil animal remains, are also related to the δ^(15)N value of the diet. 
The dependence of the δ^(15)N values of whole animals and their tissues and biochemical components on the δ^(15)N value of diet indicates that the isotopic composition of animal nitrogen can be used to obtain information about an animal's diet if its potential food sources had different δ^(15)N values. The nitrogen isotopic method of dietary analysis probably can be used to estimate the relative use of legumes vs non-legumes or of aquatic vs terrestrial organisms as food sources for extant and fossil animals. However, the method probably will not be applicable in those modern ecosystems in which the use of chemical fertilizers has influenced the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in food sources. 
The isotopic method of dietary analysis was used to reconstruct changes in the diet of the human population that occupied the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico over a 7000 yr span. Variations in the δ^(15)C and δ^(15)N values of bone collagen suggest that C_4 and/or CAM plants (presumably mostly corn) and legumes (presumably mostly beans) were introduced into the diet much earlier than suggested by conventional archaeological analysis.

Influence of Diet On the Distribtion of Nitrogen Isotopes in Animals

The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

Alcohol is a special form of embodied material culture and the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world. It has been a fundamentally important social, economic, political, and religious artifact for millennia. This review assesses trends in the anthropological engagement with alcohol during the past two decades since the Annual Review last covered this subject. It highlights the growing archaeological contributions to the field, as well as recent developments by sociocultural anthropologists and social historians. Increasing historicization has been a useful corrective to the earlier functionalist emphasis on the socially integrative role of drinking. Recent studies tend to employ a more strategic/agentive analytical framework and treat drinking through the lens of practice, politics, and gender. Moreover, alcohol has come to be seen as an important component of the political economy and a commodity centrally implicated in strategies of colonialism and postcolonial struggles over state pow...

Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives

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Human Skeletal Remains Excavation Analysis Interpretation

Strontium isotope analysis is applied in South America for the first time in order to investigate residential mobility and mortuary ritual from ad 500 to 1000. While Tiwanaku-style artefacts are spread throughout Bolivia, southern Peru and northern Chile during this time, the nature of Tiwanaku influence in the region is much debated. Human skeletal remains from the site of Tiwanaku and the proposed Tiwanaku colony of Chen Chen have been analysed to test the hypothesis that Tiwanaku colonies, populated with inhabitants from Tiwanaku, existed in Peru. Strontium isotope analysis supports this hypothesis by demonstrating that non-local individuals are present at both sites.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2004.00140.x

The Use of Strontium Isotope Analysis to Investigate Tiwanaku Migration and Mortuary Ritual in Bolivia and Peru

Long-distance exchange of exotic preciosities, while it can occur in any sociopolitical context, may be associated with both chiefly formation and state hegemony. In the south central Andes, shared stylistic elements in early complex societies of Paracas-Nasca on the Peruvian south coast and Pukara in the altiplano suggest their contact via intermediate areas. Unfortunately, interpretations of the interaction of these great traditions tend to neglect indigenous sociopolitical development in regions between the two culture areas. Recent systematic survey in one such intermediate region, Peru's Moquegua Valley, has shed light on an indigenous pre-Tiwanaku culture with distinctive regional settlement patterns, complex mortuary practices, and a local ceramic tradition known as Huaracane (385 cal B. C-cal A. D. 340). Surface collections and test excavations confirm a minimal presence of exotic Pukara and Paracas-Nasca ceramics and textiles in association with elite local residential contexts and a late Huaracane mortuary tradition known as “boot tombs” that appears after 170 cal B. C. As there is no general emulation of foreign styles, domestic activities, or practices, an agency-oriented local perspective is favored over globalist colonial or clientage models to explain the role of exotica in a climate of competitive sociopolitical development.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/67237E3458426D58D59542FE002343B1/S1045663500006210a.pdf/div-class-title-exotic-goods-and-everyday-chiefs-long-distance-exchange-and-indigenous-sociopolitical-development-in-the-south-central-andes-div.pdf

Exotic Goods and Everyday Chiefs: Long-Distance Exchange and Indigenous Sociopolitical Development in the South Central Andes

Andean Diaspora: The Tiwanaku Colonies and the Origins of South American Empire

Until recently, an entrenched view of Tiwanaku expansion in the south-central Andes as a primarily cultic phenomenon precluded discussion of state-built ceremonial facilities outside of Tiwanaku’s immediate hinterland of the Bolivian altiplano. However, recent research in the Tiwanaku periphery has found specialized ceremonial architecture that reflects the solidification of central control and the development of a provincial system. Excavation at the Omo M10 site, in Moquegua, Peru, has exposed the only Tiwanaku sunken-court temple structure and cut-stone architecture known outside of the Titicaca Basin. A reconstruction of the Omo temple complex demonstrates direct parallels with Tiwanaku ceremonial centers of the altiplano in architectural form and ceremonial activities. This suggests that patterns of state-centered ceremony and peripheral administration underwent a dramatic transformation with the explosive expansion of the Tiwanaku state during the period known as Tiwanaku V (A. D. 725–1000).

Tiwanaku Temples and State Expansion: A Tiwanaku Sunken-Court Temple in Moquegua, Peru

Artificial Cranial Deformation at the Omo M10 Site: A Tiwanaku Complex from the Moquegua Valley, Peru

In this paper, I consider the close correlation of dramatic changes in culinary traditions with the political development of one of the New World’s earliest expansive state societies. A comparison of Tiwanaku’s ceramic assemblages with those of its antecedents, as well as settlement pattern and household archaeology and preliminary isotopic data on diet, suggest that the Tiwanaku phenomenon was accompanied by revolutionary new patterns in food, drink, and daily domestic life. In examining these changes in the Tiwanaku core region and in its peripheries my goal is to consider the intersection of shifts in culinary traditions with changes not only in domestic and political economy, but in the social and cultural realities and identities signified by quotidian daily life. I argue that radical culinary change was a crucial aspect of the incorporation of disparate peoples into the Tiwanaku civilization. The growth of Tiwanaku as a polity and a shared corporate identity was accompanied by three simultaneous and related phenomena: 1) the development and rapid diffusion of a hitherto unseen functional assemblage dedicated to preparing and serving maize beer, 2) the successful long-term colonization of maize-producing regions, and 3) the promulgation of a shared corporate identity among confederated ethnic groups and clans linked by a common ideology. This incorporation appears to have been largely consensual, rather than coerced, and the principal culinary factor was a mania for maize beer that took root everywhere Tiwanaku influence was accepted.

Paul S. Goldstein

Papers

Exotic Goods and Everyday Chiefs: Long-Distance Exchange and Indigenous Sociopolitical Development in the South Central Andes

Andean Diaspora: The Tiwanaku Colonies and the Origins of South American Empire

Tiwanaku Temples and State Expansion: A Tiwanaku Sunken-Court Temple in Moquegua, Peru

Artificial Cranial Deformation at the Omo M10 Site: A Tiwanaku Complex from the Moquegua Valley, Peru

From Stew-Eaters to Maize-Drinkers