Sokendai Review of Cultural and Social Studies

ENGLISH SUMMARY

An Analysis of Food Dependent
Rate of Land and Sea from Carbon 14 Determination
of Human Bone

Motoshige, DATE

(Department of Japanese History, School of Cultural and Social Studies,
The Graduate University for Advanced Studies)

Key words:

Carbon 14, Marine reservoir effect, Carbon and Nitrogen isotopes, diet

Since human is an omnivorous animal, when marine resources are taken in as food, the carbon of the sea origin will be accumulated in his bone. Because of the influence of the marine reservoir effect, the 14C age of bones becomes older than the actual age. This often poses a problem on the calibration age determination. In order to adjust this influence, there are several methods, including the method to estimate the intake food by isotope analysis. However, if the actual bony age is known beforehand, it could be possible to calculate the food dependent rate of land and sea origins from the difference of the 14C age.

We conducted the fundamental experiment for developing the method of measuring the dependence of marine resources by using the difference of 14C age of bones and actual death age utilizing the bone which could be estimated the death time.