Summary: | Understanding mobility and landscape use is important in reconstructing subsistence behavior, range, and group size, and it may contribute to our understanding
of phenomena such as the dynamics of biological and cultural interactions between
distinct populations of Upper Pleistocene humans. However, studies using traditional
strontium isotope analysis are generally limited to identifying locations of childhood residence or nonlocal individuals and lack the sampling resolution to detect
movement over short timescales. Here, using an optimized methodology, we present
highly spatially resolved 87Sr/86Sr measurements made by laser ablation multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry along the growth axis of the
enamel of two marine isotope stage 5b, Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal teeth (Gruta
da Oliveira), a Tardiglacial, Late Magdalenian human tooth (Galeria da Cisterna),
and associated contemporaneous fauna from the Almonda karst system, Torres
Novas, Portugal. Strontium isotope mapping of the region shows extreme variation
in 87Sr/86Sr, with values ranging from 0.7080 to 0.7160 over a distance of c. 50 km,
allowing short-distance (and arguably short-duration) movement to be detected. We
find that the early Middle Paleolithic individuals roamed across a subsistence territory
of approximately 600 km2
, while the Late Magdalenian individual parsimoniously
fits a pattern of limited, probably seasonal movement along the right bank of the
20-km-long Almonda River valley, between mouth and spring, exploiting a smaller
territory of approximately 300 km2
. We argue that the differences in territory size are
due to an increase in population density during the Late Upper Paleolithic.
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