Bioavailable soil and rock strontium isotope data from Israel

• Main Authors: I. Moffat, R. Rudd, M. Willmes, G. Mortimer, L. Kinsley, L. McMorrow, R. Armstrong, M. Aubert, R. Grün
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2020-12-01
• Series: Earth System Science Data
• Online Access: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3641/2020/essd-12-3641-2020.pdf

<p>Strontium isotope ratios (<span class="inline-formula">⁸⁷</span>Sr <span class="inline-formula">∕</span> <span class="inline-formula">⁸⁶</span>Sr) of biogenic material such as bones and teeth reflect the local sources of strontium ingested as food and drink during their formation. This has led to the use of strontium isotope ratios as a geochemical tracer in a wide range of fields including archaeology, ecology, food studies and forensic sciences. In order to utilise strontium as a geochemical tracer, baseline data of bioavailable <span class="inline-formula">⁸⁷</span>Sr <span class="inline-formula">∕</span> <span class="inline-formula">⁸⁶</span>Sr in the region of interest are required, and a growing number of studies have developed reference maps for this purpose in various geographic regions, and over varying scales. This study presents a new data set of bioavailable strontium isotope ratios from rock and soil samples across Israel, as well as from sediment layers from seven key archaeological sites. This data set may be viewed and accessed both in an Open Science Framework repository (<a href="https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XKJ5Y">https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/XKJ5Y</a>, Moffat et al., 2020) or via the IRHUM (Isotopic Reconstruction of Human Migration) database.</p>