L J Reitsema
Biographic Data
| ID | 27420 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L J Reitsema |
| GIVEN NAMES | L J |
| FAMILY NAME | Reitsema |
| SIGNATURE | REITSEMA L J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1127-3496 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 223 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Commentary
Typically used to reconstruct diets and migration histories, isotope ratios in human tissues also reflect physiological states associated with health and stress. The publication in 2013 of a paper in the American Journal of Human Biology reviewing such cases has been widely cited. This article revisits this topic and reviews key research exploring the use of isotope ratios as a means for evaluating physiological processes. The review permits a cr…
Violent death of a warrior in the destruction of Roca Vecchia, Apulia, Italy
This study recreates aspects of the life and death of a young adult male who died during the siege of Roca Vecchia, a Bronze Age fortified coastal site in Italy. The partially charred and unburied individual, Roca US813A, was found among the debris in the southern room of the main gate to the city. This paper highlights information that can be retrieved from a single partially preserved skeleton. Detailed bioarchaeological, forensic, and taphonom…
Exploring the effects of weaning age on adult infectious disease mortality among 18th–19th century Italians
Objectives The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis describes how early childhood stress affects morbidity and mortality later in life. The role of early childhood stress in mortality from infectious disease is understudied. Stressors in early childhood that weaken the immune system may result in increased susceptibility to infectious disease in adulthood. Weaning is one of the earliest potential periods of significant s…
Bioarchaeological evidence for ancient human diet and migration at Epidamnus/Dyrrachion and Apollonia in Illyria, Albania
Perils, Potential and Perspectives of Bioarchaeological Analyses in the Study of Mediterranean Mobility
The resolution of bioarchaeological analyses has improved dramatically in recent years, and bioarchaeology is increasingly employed in areas of the world where preservation issues and disciplinary traditions had previously hindered its application. One such area is the Mediterranean region. Bioarchaeological analyses arguably are the most direct indicator of human behavior in the past, and as a result the full integration of bioarchaeology and ar…
Bioarchaeological reconstruction of physiological stress during social transition in Albania
In Flux
Food traditions and colonial interactions in the ancient Mediterranean
Sex- and status-based differences in medieval food preparation and consumption
Stable Isotope Analysis and the Study of Human Stress, Disease, and Nutrition
This issue explores recent advances and future prospects in the application of stable isotope ratio data to human paleopathology. Stable isotope analysis of human remains is widely used in anthropology to reconstruct past diet and migration, based on the adage “You are what you eat,” and is valued as direct and individualized evidence of the lives of past people. In addition to diet, pathological conditions and physiological stress affecting frac…
Early Life Stress at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale
This study examines internal enamel micro-defects and incremental isotopic data from tooth dentin to reconstruct early life stress and dietary histories of native individuals interred at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale (ca. A.D. 1605–1680), St. Catherines Island, Georgia. Spanish missionization in North America is associated with dietary change and increased indigenous stress. By integrating incremental isotopic data with enamel defect records, m…
What is this bird? The quest to identify parrot remains from the Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, South Carolina
Excavations in the 1970s at the ca. 1772 Heyward-Washington House in Charleston, South Carolina, produced a rich and diverse archaeological assemblage spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among the vertebrate remains are four bones from a large member of the parrot family. We now believe the bird was a blue-fronted or turquoise-fronted amazon parrot (Psittacidae: Amazona aestiva), an animal originating in South America. Over the deca…
Examining the osteological paradox
OBJECTIVES: Bioarchaeologists interpret skeletal stress as evidence of resilience or frailty, where absence of lesions might result from lack of exposure to pathogens (i.e., good health) or extreme vulnerability (i.e., selection). We examine physiological stress in two skeletal series from Greek Himera: (1) nine mass graves from the battles of Himera (480 and 409 BCE) and (2) Himeran civilians (648-409 BCE). Civilians are assumed to have died fro…
Resilience and local dietary adaptation in rural Poland, 1000–1400 CE
Advances in primate stable isotope ecology—Achievements and future prospects
Stable isotope biogeochemistry has been used to investigate foraging ecology in non-human primates for nearly 30 years. Whereas early studies focused on diet, more recently, isotopic analysis has been used to address a diversity of ecological questions ranging from niche partitioning to nutritional status to variability in life history traits. With this increasing array of applications, stable isotope analysis stands to make major contributions t…
Inter‐individual variation in weaning among rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta )
Weaning is a transition in early development with major implications for infant survival and well-being, and for maternal lifetime reproductive success. The particular strategy a primate mother adopts in rearing her offspring represents a negotiation between her ability to invest and her need to invest, and can be considered adaptive and influenced by biological and social factors. Any investigation into how and why maternal weaning strategies di…
Subadult dietary variation at Trino Vercellese, Italy, and its relationship to adult diet and mortality
OBJECTIVES: Early-life nutrition is a predisposing factor for later-life outcomes. This study tests the hypothesis that subadults from medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy, who lived to adulthood consumed isotopically different diets compared with subadults who died before reaching adulthood. We have previously used a life history approach, comparing dentine and bone of the same adult individuals ("subadults who lived"), to elucidate dietary variatio…
Laboratory and field methods for stable isotope analysis in human biology
Stable isotope analysis (SIA; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen) of human tissues offers a means for assessing diet among living humans. Stable isotope ratios of broad categories of food and drink food vary systematically, and stable isotope ratios in consumer tissues represent a composite of the isotopic ratios of food and drink consumed during an individual's life. Isotopic evidence for diet is independent of errors in informant re…
Provisioning an Urban Economy
Isotopic evidence from animal bones deposited in urban contexts offers a landscape perspective into urban life, hinting at where animals lived before reaching their final resting place in the city. Here, we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope evidence from cattle (Bos taurus) bones excavated from commercial and residential sites within historic Charleston, South Carolina, to evaluate whether markets pooled or segregated access to beef cattle d…
Growth velocity and weaning δ 15 N “Dips” during ontogeny in Macaca mulatta
OBJECTIVES: A "dip" in the stable nitrogen isotope ratios (δ(15)N) of subadults in the late weaning/early post-weaning phase of growth and development has been observed. Speculatively, this is the mechanism of positive nitrogen balance operating among rapidly growing subadults. An alternate hypothesis for δ(15)N dips is that during weaning, subadults eat lower-(15)N foods than adults. METHODS: This study explores the role of positive nitrogen bal…
The Late Neolithic sepulchral and ritual place of site 14 in Kowal (Kuyavia, Central Poland)
Forschungsgegenstand dieses Artikels ist ein Begräbnis- und Ritualplatz der Kugelamphoren-Kultur der Fundstätte 14 in Kowal (Zentral-Polen). Die Stätte umfasst einen Submegalithen sowie einen Ritualplatz mit Tiergräbern und einer menschlichen Bestattung. Der Komplex kann auf die Zeit zwischen 3250/3100 und 2400/2150 v. Chr. datiert werden. Analysen haben gezeigt, dass der Platz über eine lange Zeit benutzt wurde, und dass die durchgeführten Ritua…
Reconciling “stress” and “health” in physical anthropology
The concepts of “stress” and “health” are foundational in physical anthropology as guidelines for interpreting human behavior and biocultural adaptation in the past and present. Though related, stress and health are not coterminous, and while the term “health” encompasses some aspects of “stress,” health refers to a more holistic condition beyond just physiological disruption, and is of considerable significance in contributing to anthropologists…
Beyond diet reconstruction
Beyond diet reconstruction
Analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from soft or mineralized tissues is a direct and widely‐used technique for modeling diets. In addition to its continued role in paleodiet analysis, stable isotope analysis is now contributing to studies of physiology, disease, and nutrition in archaeological and living human populations. In humans and other animals, dietary uptake and distribution of carbon and nitrogen among mineralized and soft ti…
Diet and society in Poland before the state
The 1st–4th c. AD Wielbark culture of Eastern Europe is relatively understudied bioarchaeologically due to the fragmentary nature of its cemeteries. Here, we report the first stable isotope analysis of Wielbark diet using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures from both collagen and carbonate of 30 individuals from Rogowo, a 2nd c. Wielbark cemetery in North-Central Poland. Diet at Rogowo was primarily based on terrestrial foods and includ…
Stable isotope evidence for sex‐ and status‐based variations in diet and life history at medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy
The medieval period in Europe was a time of unprecedented social complexity that affected human diet. The diets of certain subgroups—for example, children, women, and the poor—are chronically underrepresented in historical sources from the medieval period. To better understand diet and the distribution of foods during the medieval period, we investigated stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of 30 individuals from Trino Vercellese, Northern I…
Preliminary evidence for medieval Polish diet from carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes
Reconciling “stress” and “health” in physical anthropology
The concepts of “stress” and “health” are foundational in physical anthropology as guidelines for interpreting human behavior and biocultural adaptation in the past and present. Though related, stress and health are not coterminous, and while the term “health” encompasses some aspects of “stress,” health refers to a more holistic condition beyond just physiological disruption, and is of considerable significance in contributing to anthropologists…
Human–environment interactions in medieval Poland
Examining the osteological paradox
OBJECTIVES: Bioarchaeologists interpret skeletal stress as evidence of resilience or frailty, where absence of lesions might result from lack of exposure to pathogens (i.e., good health) or extreme vulnerability (i.e., selection). We examine physiological stress in two skeletal series from Greek Himera: (1) nine mass graves from the battles of Himera (480 and 409 BCE) and (2) Himeran civilians (648-409 BCE). Civilians are assumed to have died fro…
Subadult dietary variation at Trino Vercellese, Italy, and its relationship to adult diet and mortality
OBJECTIVES: Early-life nutrition is a predisposing factor for later-life outcomes. This study tests the hypothesis that subadults from medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy, who lived to adulthood consumed isotopically different diets compared with subadults who died before reaching adulthood. We have previously used a life history approach, comparing dentine and bone of the same adult individuals ("subadults who lived"), to elucidate dietary variatio…
Growth velocity and weaning δ 15 N “Dips” during ontogeny in Macaca mulatta
OBJECTIVES: A "dip" in the stable nitrogen isotope ratios (δ(15)N) of subadults in the late weaning/early post-weaning phase of growth and development has been observed. Speculatively, this is the mechanism of positive nitrogen balance operating among rapidly growing subadults. An alternate hypothesis for δ(15)N dips is that during weaning, subadults eat lower-(15)N foods than adults. METHODS: This study explores the role of positive nitrogen bal…
Food traditions and colonial interactions in the ancient Mediterranean
Provisioning an Urban Economy
Isotopic evidence from animal bones deposited in urban contexts offers a landscape perspective into urban life, hinting at where animals lived before reaching their final resting place in the city. Here, we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope evidence from cattle (Bos taurus) bones excavated from commercial and residential sites within historic Charleston, South Carolina, to evaluate whether markets pooled or segregated access to beef cattle d…
Brief communication
The origins of sickle‐cell disease (SCD) are well understood, as are its evolutionary pressures on humans and pathological presentation. However, because it has not been possible to identify SCD in archaeological contexts, its biocultural effects on past populations are unknown. Previous research investigating oxygen isotope fractionation during respiration among anemics suggests that oxygen isotopes in bone apatite may provide a biological marke…
Sex- and status-based differences in medieval food preparation and consumption
In Flux
The Late Neolithic sepulchral and ritual place of site 14 in Kowal (Kuyavia, Central Poland)
Forschungsgegenstand dieses Artikels ist ein Begräbnis- und Ritualplatz der Kugelamphoren-Kultur der Fundstätte 14 in Kowal (Zentral-Polen). Die Stätte umfasst einen Submegalithen sowie einen Ritualplatz mit Tiergräbern und einer menschlichen Bestattung. Der Komplex kann auf die Zeit zwischen 3250/3100 und 2400/2150 v. Chr. datiert werden. Analysen haben gezeigt, dass der Platz über eine lange Zeit benutzt wurde, und dass die durchgeführten Ritua…
Preliminary evidence for medieval Polish diet from carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes
Brief communication
The origins of sickle‐cell disease (SCD) are well understood, as are its evolutionary pressures on humans and pathological presentation. However, because it has not been possible to identify SCD in archaeological contexts, its biocultural effects on past populations are unknown. Previous research investigating oxygen isotope fractionation during respiration among anemics suggests that oxygen isotopes in bone apatite may provide a biological marke…
Introducing Fecal Stable Isotope Analysis in Primate Weaning Studies
This research investigates the potential of a new, noninvasive method for determining age of weaning among primates using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in feces. Analysis of stable isotope ratios in body tissues is a well‐established method in archeology and ecology for reconstructing diet. This is the first study to investigate weaning in primates using fecal stable isotope ratios. Diets of a single François’ langur ( Trachypithecus …
Stable isotope evidence for sex‐ and status‐based variations in diet and life history at medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy
The medieval period in Europe was a time of unprecedented social complexity that affected human diet. The diets of certain subgroups—for example, children, women, and the poor—are chronically underrepresented in historical sources from the medieval period. To better understand diet and the distribution of foods during the medieval period, we investigated stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of 30 individuals from Trino Vercellese, Northern I…
Beyond diet reconstruction
Beyond diet reconstruction
Analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from soft or mineralized tissues is a direct and widely‐used technique for modeling diets. In addition to its continued role in paleodiet analysis, stable isotope analysis is now contributing to studies of physiology, disease, and nutrition in archaeological and living human populations. In humans and other animals, dietary uptake and distribution of carbon and nitrogen among mineralized and soft ti…
Diet and society in Poland before the state
The 1st–4th c. AD Wielbark culture of Eastern Europe is relatively understudied bioarchaeologically due to the fragmentary nature of its cemeteries. Here, we report the first stable isotope analysis of Wielbark diet using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures from both collagen and carbonate of 30 individuals from Rogowo, a 2nd c. Wielbark cemetery in North-Central Poland. Diet at Rogowo was primarily based on terrestrial foods and includ…
Human–environment interactions in medieval Poland
The Late Neolithic sepulchral and ritual place of site 14 in Kowal (Kuyavia, Central Poland)
Forschungsgegenstand dieses Artikels ist ein Begräbnis- und Ritualplatz der Kugelamphoren-Kultur der Fundstätte 14 in Kowal (Zentral-Polen). Die Stätte umfasst einen Submegalithen sowie einen Ritualplatz mit Tiergräbern und einer menschlichen Bestattung. Der Komplex kann auf die Zeit zwischen 3250/3100 und 2400/2150 v. Chr. datiert werden. Analysen haben gezeigt, dass der Platz über eine lange Zeit benutzt wurde, und dass die durchgeführten Ritua…
Reconciling “stress” and “health” in physical anthropology
The concepts of “stress” and “health” are foundational in physical anthropology as guidelines for interpreting human behavior and biocultural adaptation in the past and present. Though related, stress and health are not coterminous, and while the term “health” encompasses some aspects of “stress,” health refers to a more holistic condition beyond just physiological disruption, and is of considerable significance in contributing to anthropologists…
Laboratory and field methods for stable isotope analysis in human biology
Stable isotope analysis (SIA; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen) of human tissues offers a means for assessing diet among living humans. Stable isotope ratios of broad categories of food and drink food vary systematically, and stable isotope ratios in consumer tissues represent a composite of the isotopic ratios of food and drink consumed during an individual's life. Isotopic evidence for diet is independent of errors in informant re…
Provisioning an Urban Economy
Isotopic evidence from animal bones deposited in urban contexts offers a landscape perspective into urban life, hinting at where animals lived before reaching their final resting place in the city. Here, we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope evidence from cattle (Bos taurus) bones excavated from commercial and residential sites within historic Charleston, South Carolina, to evaluate whether markets pooled or segregated access to beef cattle d…
Growth velocity and weaning δ 15 N “Dips” during ontogeny in Macaca mulatta
OBJECTIVES: A "dip" in the stable nitrogen isotope ratios (δ(15)N) of subadults in the late weaning/early post-weaning phase of growth and development has been observed. Speculatively, this is the mechanism of positive nitrogen balance operating among rapidly growing subadults. An alternate hypothesis for δ(15)N dips is that during weaning, subadults eat lower-(15)N foods than adults. METHODS: This study explores the role of positive nitrogen bal…
Advances in primate stable isotope ecology—Achievements and future prospects
Stable isotope biogeochemistry has been used to investigate foraging ecology in non-human primates for nearly 30 years. Whereas early studies focused on diet, more recently, isotopic analysis has been used to address a diversity of ecological questions ranging from niche partitioning to nutritional status to variability in life history traits. With this increasing array of applications, stable isotope analysis stands to make major contributions t…
Inter‐individual variation in weaning among rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta )
Weaning is a transition in early development with major implications for infant survival and well-being, and for maternal lifetime reproductive success. The particular strategy a primate mother adopts in rearing her offspring represents a negotiation between her ability to invest and her need to invest, and can be considered adaptive and influenced by biological and social factors. Any investigation into how and why maternal weaning strategies di…
Subadult dietary variation at Trino Vercellese, Italy, and its relationship to adult diet and mortality
OBJECTIVES: Early-life nutrition is a predisposing factor for later-life outcomes. This study tests the hypothesis that subadults from medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy, who lived to adulthood consumed isotopically different diets compared with subadults who died before reaching adulthood. We have previously used a life history approach, comparing dentine and bone of the same adult individuals ("subadults who lived"), to elucidate dietary variatio…
Resilience and local dietary adaptation in rural Poland, 1000–1400 CE
Stable Isotope Analysis and the Study of Human Stress, Disease, and Nutrition
This issue explores recent advances and future prospects in the application of stable isotope ratio data to human paleopathology. Stable isotope analysis of human remains is widely used in anthropology to reconstruct past diet and migration, based on the adage “You are what you eat,” and is valued as direct and individualized evidence of the lives of past people. In addition to diet, pathological conditions and physiological stress affecting frac…
Early Life Stress at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale
This study examines internal enamel micro-defects and incremental isotopic data from tooth dentin to reconstruct early life stress and dietary histories of native individuals interred at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale (ca. A.D. 1605–1680), St. Catherines Island, Georgia. Spanish missionization in North America is associated with dietary change and increased indigenous stress. By integrating incremental isotopic data with enamel defect records, m…
What is this bird? The quest to identify parrot remains from the Heyward-Washington House, Charleston, South Carolina
Excavations in the 1970s at the ca. 1772 Heyward-Washington House in Charleston, South Carolina, produced a rich and diverse archaeological assemblage spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among the vertebrate remains are four bones from a large member of the parrot family. We now believe the bird was a blue-fronted or turquoise-fronted amazon parrot (Psittacidae: Amazona aestiva), an animal originating in South America. Over the deca…
Examining the osteological paradox
OBJECTIVES: Bioarchaeologists interpret skeletal stress as evidence of resilience or frailty, where absence of lesions might result from lack of exposure to pathogens (i.e., good health) or extreme vulnerability (i.e., selection). We examine physiological stress in two skeletal series from Greek Himera: (1) nine mass graves from the battles of Himera (480 and 409 BCE) and (2) Himeran civilians (648-409 BCE). Civilians are assumed to have died fro…
Sex- and status-based differences in medieval food preparation and consumption
Bioarchaeological reconstruction of physiological stress during social transition in Albania
In Flux
Food traditions and colonial interactions in the ancient Mediterranean
Biology (21 works) · Ecology (16 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Isotope Analysis in Ecology (14 works) · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies (12 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Stable isotope ratio (11 works) · Isotope analysis (10 works)